I read this inspiring story about this courageous and idealistic Jewish rabbi named Herschel Schacter. Ideal for Holy Week reading.

I highly recommend that we read and share this story to others. Uphold goodness, faith and righteousness in this world! Best wishes!

(Image below of Buchenwald student conference - David Shechter - September 2011, sourced from haaretz.com)







Rabbi Herschel Schacter Is Dead at 95; Cried to the Jews of Buchenwald: ‘You Are Free’

via Yad Vashem

Rabbi Herschel Schacter leading the Shavuot prayer service for survivors in the Buchenwald camp in Germany in 1945.

New York Times article by  Margalit Fox

Pu

blished: March 26, 2013

The smoke was still rising as Rabbi Herschel Schacter rode through the gates of Buchenwald.

Multimedia

Photographs

Buchenwald’s Liberation, as Seen by Louis Nemeth

Librado Romero/The New York Times

Rabbi Herschel Schacter in 1999.

It was April 11, 1945, and Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army had liberated the concentration camp scarcely an hour before. Rabbi Schacter, who was attached to the Third Army’s VIII Corps, was the first Jewish chaplain to enter in its wake.

That morning, after learning that Patton’s forward tanks had arrived at the camp, Rabbi Schacter, who died in the Riverdale section of the Bronx on Thursday at 95 after a career as one of the most prominent Modern Orthodox rabbis in the United States, commandeered a jeep and driver. He left headquarters and sped toward Buchenwald.

By late afternoon, when the rabbi drove through the gates, Allied tanks had breached the camp. He remembered, he later said, the sting of smoke in his eyes, the smell of burning flesh and the hundreds of bodies strewn everywhere.

He would remain at Buchenwald for months, tending to survivors, leading religious services in a former Nazi recreation hall and eventually helping to resettle thousands of Jews.

For his work, Rabbi Schacter was singled out by name on Friday by Yisrael Meir Lau, the former Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, in a meeting with President Obama at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial.

In Buchenwald that April day, Rabbi Schacter said afterward, it seemed as though there was no one left alive. In the camp, he encountered a young American lieutenant who knew his way around.

“Are there any Jews alive here?” the rabbi asked him.

He was led to the Kleine Lager, or Little Camp, a smaller camp within the larger one. There, in filthy barracks, men lay on raw wooden planks stacked from floor to ceiling. They stared down at the rabbi, in his unfamiliar military uniform, with unmistakable fright.

“Shalom Aleichem, Yidden,” Rabbi Schacter cried in Yiddish, “ihr zint frei!” — “Peace be upon you, Jews, you are free!” He ran from barracks to barracks, repeating those words. He was joined by those Jews who could walk, until a stream of people swelled behind him.

As he passed a mound of corpses, Rabbi Schacter spied a flicker of movement. Drawing closer, he saw a small boy, Prisoner 17030, hiding in terror behind the mound.

“I was afraid of him,” the child would recall long afterward in an interview with The New York Times. “I knew all the uniforms of SS and Gestapo and Wehrmacht, and all of a sudden, a new kind of uniform. I thought, ‘A new kind of enemy.’ ”

With tears streaming down his face, Rabbi Schacter picked the boy up. “What’s your name, my child?” he asked in Yiddish.

“Lulek,” the child replied.

“How old are you?” the rabbi asked.

“What difference does it make?” Lulek, who was 7, said. “I’m older than you, anyway.”

“Why do you think you’re older?” Rabbi Schacter asked, smiling.

“Because you cry and laugh like a child,” Lulek replied. “I haven’t laughed in a long time, and I don’t even cry anymore. So which one of us is older?”

Rabbi Schacter discovered nearly a thousand orphaned children in Buchenwald. He and a colleague, Rabbi Robert Marcus, helped arrange for their transport to France — a convoy that included Lulek and the teenage Elie Wiesel — as well as to Switzerland, a group personally conveyed by Rabbi Schacter, and to Palestine. 

For decades afterward, Rabbi Schacter said, he remained haunted by his time in Buchenwald, and by the question survivors put to him as he raced through the camp that first day.

“They were asking me, over and over, ‘Does the world know what happened to us?’ ” Rabbi Schacter told The Associated Press in 1981. “And I was thinking, ‘If my own father had not caught the boat on time, I would have been there, too.’ ”

Herschel Schacter was born in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn on Oct. 10, 1917, the youngest of 10 children of parents who had come from Poland. His father, Pincus, was a seventh-generation shochet, or ritual slaughterer; his mother, the former Miriam Schimmelman, was a real estate manager.

Mr. Schacter earned a bachelor’s degree from Yeshiva University in New York in 1938; in 1941, he received ordination at Yeshiva from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, a founder of the Modern Orthodox movement.

He spent about a year as a pulpit rabbi in Stamford, Conn., before enlisting in the Army as a chaplain in 1942.

After Buchenwald was liberated, he spent every day there distributing matzo (liberation had come just a week after Passover); leading services for Shavuot, which celebrates the revelation of the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai, and which fell that year in May; and conducting Friday night services.

At one of those services, Lulek and his older brother, Naftali, were able to say Kaddish for their parents, Polish Jews who had been killed by the Nazis.

Discharged from the Army with the rank of captain, Rabbi Schacter became the spiritual leader of the Mosholu Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue on Hull Avenue in the north Bronx. He presided there from 1947 until it closed in 1999.

He was a leader of many national Jewish groups, including the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, of which he was a past chairman. He was most recently the director of rabbinic services at Yeshiva.

Rabbi Schacter, who in 1956 went to the Soviet Union with an American rabbinic delegation, was an outspoken advocate for the rights of Soviet Jews and an adviser on the subject to President Richard M. Nixon.

A resident of the Riverdale section of the Bronx, Rabbi Schacter is survived by his wife, the former Pnina Gewirtz, whom he married in 1948; a son, Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter, who confirmed his father’s death; a daughter, Miriam Schacter; four grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

And what of Lulek, the orphan Rabbi Schacter rescued from Buchenwald that day? Lulek, who eventually settled in Palestine, grew up to be Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau.

Rabbi Lau, who recounted his childhood exchange with Rabbi Schacter in a memoir, published in English in 2011 as “Out of the Depths,” was the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel from 1993 to 2003 and is now the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv.

On Friday, when Rabbi Lau told Mr. Obama of his rescue by Rabbi Schacter — he thanked the American people for delivering Buchenwald survivors “not from slavery to freedom, but from death to life” — he had not yet learned of Rabbi Schacter’s death the day before.

“For me, he was alive,” Rabbi Lau said in an interview with The Times on Monday. “I speak about him with tears in my eyes.”

Inspiring family business saga! The 30-year-old Lynsi Torres is called the billionaire "Burger Queen" of America due to the inspiring business success of her closely-held family enterprise In-N-Out Burger, wow!

(Image below of Lynsi Torres sourced from huffingtonpost.com)





(Image below sourced from gearpatrol.com)







(Image below of the mansion of Lynsi Torres , plus the logo of her In-N-Out Burger super-imposed, sourced from la.curbed.com)






Below is an interesting article featuring the inspiring success story of In-N-Out Burger:

Youngest American Woman Billionaire Found With In-N-Out

By Seth Lubove - Feb 5, 2013 5:50 AM GMT+0800 Bloomberg News

Play

Lynsi Torres' Rise to Billionaire Burger Queen

Lunchtime at the flagship In-N-Out Burger restaurant in Baldwin Park, California, is a study in efficiency. As the order line swells, smiling workers swoop in to operate empty cash registers. Another staffer cleans tables, asking customers if they’re enjoying their hamburger. Outside, a woman armed with a hand-held ordering machine speeds up the drive-through line.

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg Billionaires Editor Matthew G. Miller talks about Billionaire Drag Racer and In-N-Out Burgers President Lynsi Torres. He speaks on Bloomberg Television's "In The Loop." (Source: Bloomberg)

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- John Gordon, founder of San Diego-based restaurant consultant Pacific Management Consulting Group, talks to Bloomberg's Seth Lubove about In-N-Out Burger restaurant's 30-year-old owner Lynsi Torres and the possibility she will maintain ownership after gaining full control of the franchise in five years. Torres's most visible presence has been on the drag strip. She competes in the National Hot Rod Association’s Super Gas and Top Sportsman Division 7 categories. (Source: Bloomberg)

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Watch Bloomberg's Joe Wiesenthal, Tom Keene, Max Abelson, Stephanie Ruhle and Erik Schatzker sample the best burgers on Wall Street. They eat on Bloomberg Television's "Market Makers." (Source: Bloomberg)

Youngest American Woman Billionaire Revealed With In-N-Out Chain

Adam Lau/AP Photo

Cars line up in the drive-thru lane at In-N-Out Burger in Baldwin Park, California.

Cars line up in the drive-thru lane at In-N-Out Burger in Baldwin Park, California. Photographer: Adam Lau/AP Photo

Such service has helped In-N-Out create a rabid fan base -- and make Lynsi Torres, the chain’s 30-year-old owner and president, one of the youngest female billionaires on Earth. New store openings often resemble product releases from Apple Inc. (AAPL), with customers lined up hours in advance. City officials plead with the Irvine, California-based company to open restaurants in their municipalities.

“They have done a fantastic job of building and maintaining a kind of cult following,” said Bob Goldin, executive vice president of Chicago-based food industry research firm Technomic Inc. “Someone would love to buy them.”

That someone includes billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who told a group of visiting business students in 2005 that he’d like to own the chain, according to an account of the meeting on the UCLA Anderson School of Management website.

The thrice-married Torres has watched her family expand In- N-Out from a single drive-through hamburger stand founded in 1948 in Baldwin Park by her grandparents, Harry and Esther Snyder, into a fast-food empire worth more than $1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Biblical Citations

Famous for its Double-Double cheeseburgers, fresh ingredients and discreet biblical citations on its cups and food wrappers, In-N-Out has almost 280 units in five states. The closely held company had sales of about $625 million in 2012, after applying a five-year compound annual growth rate of 4.6 percent to industry trade magazine Nation’s Restaurant News’s 2011 sales estimate of $596 million.

In-N-Out is valued at about $1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg ranking, based on the average price-to-earnings, enterprise value-to-sales and enterprise value-to-earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization multiples of five publicly traded peers: Yum! Brands Inc. (YUM), Jack in the Box Inc., Wendy’s Co. (WEN), Sonic Corp. (SONC) and McDonald’s Corp. (MCD) Enterprise value is defined as market capitalization plus total debt minus cash.

One private equity executive who invests in the food and restaurant industry said the operation could be valued at more than $2 billion, based on its productivity per unit, profitability and potential for expansion. The person asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak about his company’s potential investments.

Plane Crash

“In-N-Out Burger is a private company and this valuation of the company is nothing more than speculation based on estimates from people with no knowledge of In-N-Out’s financials, which are and always have been private,” Carl Van Fleet, the company’s vice president of planning and development, said in an e-mailed statement.

Torres, who has never appeared on an international wealth ranking and declined to comment for this article, came to control In-N-Out after several family deaths. When her grandfather Harry died in 1976, his second son, Rich, took over as company president and expanded the chain to 93 restaurants from 18.

Torres’s father, Harry Guy Snyder, became chief executive following Rich’s 1993 death in a plane crash at age 41. The chain expanded to 140 locations under Guy, who inherited his father’s passion for drag racing.

Ford Cobra

When he died of a prescription drug overdose at age 49 in 1999, Snyder’s estate included 27 cars and other vehicles, including a 1965 Ford Cobra and a pair of 1960’s-era Dodge Dart muscle cars, according to his will.

Torres’s grandmother Esther -- Harry’s widow -- maintained control of the company until her death in 2006 at age 86. When she died, Torres was the sole family heir. She now controls the company through a trust that gave her half ownership when she turned 30 last year, and will give her full control when she turns 35.

The company has no other owners, according to an Arizona state corporation commission filing.
Few in the restaurant industry have met or know much about the hamburger heiress.

“I have no clue about her,” said Janet Lowder, a Rancho Palos Verdes, California, restaurant consultant, who said she was one of the few people to extract the company’s internal finances from Esther Snyder in the 1980’s for industry-wide surveys. “I was even surprised there was a granddaughter.”

Limited Menu

Technomic’s Goldin said the lack of visibility extends to management.
“I’ve been in the industry a long time, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of their people at an industry meeting,” he said. “They’re very quiet. That’s their culture.”

Torres has little formal management training and no college degree. The company was structured to carry on after the demise of its founders, according to a 2003 Harvard Business School case study. In-N-Out has never franchised to outside operators, the Harvard researchers said, giving up a low-cost revenue stream in exchange for maintaining quality control.

In a 2005 article in the Harvard Business Review, Boston- based Bain & Co. consultants Mark Gottfredson and Keith Aspinall attributed the company’s estimated 20 percent profit margins at the time to the simplicity of its limited menu. Contrast that with competitors such as Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald’s and Miami-based Burger King Worldwide Inc. (BKW), which regularly change their food offerings.

Over-sized Tires

“Other chains seem to change positions as often as they change their underwear,” said Bob Sandelman, chief executive officer of San Clemente, California-based food industry researcher Sandelman & Associates.

Butchers carve fresh beef chuck delivered daily to the company’s distribution facility in Baldwin Park, where hamburger patties leave for restaurants on 18-wheeled refrigerated trucks outfitted with over-sized tires so the In-N-Out logo can be better seen on the highway. The company only expands as far as its trucks can travel in a day, either from the Baldwin Park complex or a newer facility in Dallas, the only two places where the company makes hamburger patties.

‘Calculated Growth’

In-N-Out expanded to Texas in 2011, after building a warehouse and the patty facility. There are now 16 units in the state. Conrad Lyon, a Los Angeles-based senior restaurants analyst for B. Riley Caris, said additional expansion will continue to be gradual.

“I would expect slow, calculated growth,” he said in a phone interview. “To outsiders the company’s growth out West likely appears sluggish. However, it was management carefully leveraging its brand, real estate and distribution. As a private company-owned system, In-N-Out has the luxury of calling the shots to replicate its success without succumbing to potentially detrimental outside influences.”

The company’s pace of expansion was one of the issues at stake in an exchange of lawsuits in 2006 between Torres, In-N- Out executives and Richard Boyd, the company’s former vice president of real estate and development. Boyd was one of two trustees overseeing the trust that controls the company’s stock on behalf of Torres.

Complaints, Allegations

Among other allegations filed in California state court in Los Angeles, Boyd claimed Torres and Mark Taylor -- her brother- in-law from a half-sister -- conspired to remove Esther Snyder from the company to gain control of In-N-Out. He filed a separate petition with the probate court seeking to prevent Torres from removing him as a trustee.

Torres denied the allegations in both a formal answer to Boyd’s complaint and a 2006 letter to the editor published in the Los Angeles Times, in which she said she only had “minimal involvement” in the company’s business decisions, and didn’t favor rapid expansion.

The company in turn filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Boyd, alleging fraud and embezzlement in connection to Boyd’s relationship to one of In-N-Out’s outside construction firms. Boyd’s lawyer, Philip Heller of Fagelbaum & Heller LLP in Los Angeles, said all the litigation was dismissed following a confidential settlement. Boyd resigned from the company and the trust.

“They were all in the end amicably resolved,” Heller said.

16 Bathrooms

Since then, Torres has refused most interview requests, even by author Stacy Perman, who wrote a 352-page book about In- N-Out in 2009. Torres asked to set up a meeting with the author after the book’s publication, but it never occurred, Perman wrote in an afterword to the 2010 paperback edition.

Torres popped up in real-estate blogs in September, after buying a $17.4 million, 16,600-square-foot mansion in the wealthy enclave of Bradbury, California, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. A Realtor.com listing for the house described it as having seven bedrooms, 16 bathrooms, a pool, a tennis court and other amenities.

Torres is one of almost 90 hidden billionaires discovered by Bloomberg News since the debut of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index in March 2012. Among them: Dirce Camargo, the richest woman in Brazil, and Elaine Marshall, the fourth-richest woman in America.

Like Camargo and Marshall, Torres maintains a low profile. Her most visible presence has been on the drag strip. She competes in the National Hot Rod Association’s Super Gas and Top Sportsman Division 7 categories, alternating between a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda and a 1984 Chevrolet Camaro, according to NHRA results. Her third husband, Val Torres Jr., is also a race- car driver.

‘Open Question’

She also inherited her Uncle Rich’s interest in religion, funding a non-profit organization called Healing Hearts & Nations that proselytizes in Africa, according to a 2010 Form 990 foundation filing that lists Torres as the chief financial officer. Former In-N-Out executive Boyd alleged in his 2006 cross-complaint against the company that Torres attempted to fire him because he was not a “man of God,” and because he didn’t attend prayer meetings at her home. She denied Boyd’s claims in the company’s answer.

Whether the mother of twins will maintain ownership in the chain after she gains full control in five years is uncertain, said John Gordon, founder of San Diego-based restaurant consultant Pacific Management Consulting Group.

“It’s an open question whether she may have different feelings later,” said Gordon. “Like most kids, or second or third generations of a very wealthy family, I don’t know that she has restaurant blood in her veins, or if she’s a trust fund baby.”

Congratulations to this visionary business taipan of Thailand, Dhanin Chearavanont (Chinese name in simplified characters: 谢国民)!

He is one of the most talented and gutsiest entrepreneurs in the world whom I admire very much.

I had seen Dhanin Chearavanont made an eloquent speech and answer questions at an open forum in fluent Mandarin at the last 2011 World Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention held in Singapore, and he had brilliant as well as wise ideas!

(This Forbes magazine cover image sourced from nationmultimedia.com)





(Image below sourced from economist.com)

HSBC Sells $7.4 Billion Ping An Stake to Thai Billionaire Dhanin

By Bloomberg News - Feb 1, 2013 7:12 PM GMT+0800

HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA)’s $7.4 billion sale of its stake in Ping An Insurance (Group) Co. (2318) to Thai billionaire Dhanin Chearavanont was cleared by regulators, ending six weeks of speculation over the deal’s fate.

Dhanin’s Charoen Pokphand Group Co. and HSBC said payment was made in cash after the China Insurance Regulatory Commission approved the sale of 976.1 million Hong Kong-traded shares in the nation’s second-largest insurer. The transfer will take place by Wednesday, HSBC said in its statement.

China Approves HSBC’s Sale of Ping An Stake to Thai Billionaire

Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Pedestrians walk past a Ping An Insurance (Group) Co. advertisement in Beijing.

The transaction will generate a $2.6 billion profit for London-based HSBC, bolstering Chief Executive Officer Stuart Gulliver’s efforts to revive earnings. CP Group said on Jan. 11 it had the resources to complete the purchase, damping concern the deal would collapse after Caixin Online reported that China Development Bank Corp. withdrew financing.

“Given all the twists and turns, this outcome is quite a surprise and the best for all,” said Li Wenbing, a Beijing- based analyst at Bocom International Holdings. “With a relatively passive investor like CP, Ping An’s management can maintain their control on the firm’s operation and leverage some of CP’s expertise in tapping the rural financial sector.”

Shares in Ping An have gained 23 percent in Hong Kong trading since Dec. 4, the day before the sale was announced. That’s 20 percent more than the HK$59-a-share that CP Group agreed to pay.

HSBC, which has gained almost 12 percent in the same time- frame, fell 0.3 percent to close at HK$88 on Feb. 1. The stock has advanced about 13 percent in London since Dec. 4.

Chinese Funding

HSBC agreed on Dec. 5 to sell its 15.6 percent holding in Ping An to four subsidiaries of CP Group in two phases for about $9.4 billion. The first stage, comprising shares valued at about HK$15 billion ($1.93 billion), was completed Dec. 7. The rest required approval from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission by the end of today.

The acquisition of four-fifths of the shares would be funded with cash as well as a financing agreement from the Hong Kong unit of China Development Bank, HSBC had said in December.

CP Group didn’t use that credit facility from China Development Bank, which is a policy lender based in Beijing, to finance any part of the purchase, said a person with knowledge of the transaction. The person, who asked not to be identified, didn’t say how CP Group raised funds for the deal. Today’s statements made no mention of how the deal was funded.

Seed Business

Dhanin, 73, planned to make a foray into financial services after spending more than four decades building a family seed business into Thailand’s biggest agricultural company and conglomerate. His net worth was an estimated $6.6 billion as of today, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Almost 60 percent of the fortune is from overseas private companies.

The group’s historical ties to China include becoming the first foreign investor after Deng Xiaoping opened the economy in 1979, and continued management of local agricultural projects. CP said it could help develop rural areas in China through its investment in Ping An.

“This is good news as it removes the uncertainty,” Olive Xia, a Shanghai-based analyst at Core Pacific-Yamaichi International Ltd. who recommends investors buy the shares, said by phone. “We still prefer Ping An among Chinese insurers and the stock has some upside.”

One of the world's great entrepreneurs whom I admire is the respected ethnic Chinese billionaire Robert Kuok Hock Nien  (his full name in traditional Chinese characters: 郭鶴年; simplified Chinese characters: 郭鹤年) of Malaysia and of the famous Shangri-la Hotel Group.

Robert Kuok is visionary, global in thinking, Confucian in values, an inspiring Asian business taipan!

(Image below sourced from sabahkini.net)





(Image below sourced from forbes.com, which sourced it from SPH or Straits Times)


 



Here is a latest story in Bloomberg News about this remarkable world-class success:

Billionaire Kuok Says His Empire Can Last ’Generations’

By Chanyaporn Chanjaroen & William Mellor - Feb 1, 2013 6:00 AM GMT+0800

Bloomberg Markets Magazine

When billionaire Robert Kuok introduced a luxury hotel brand in 1971, he named it Shangri-La, after the fictional utopia in which inhabitants enjoy unheard-of longevity.

Ensconced in his executive suite 32 floors above Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor -- the room decorated with a pair of elephant tusks gifted by the late Tunku Abdul Rahman, the first prime minister of Malaysia -- the world’s 38th-richest person appears to have defied the aging process himself.

Kuok Says With Right Heir His Empire Can Last `Four Generations’

Jumper/Getty Images

Western Europe's tallest office building will be home to one of Robert Kuok's new luxury Shangri-La hotels. Six are scheduled to be opened worldwide during the third quarter.

Kuok Says With Right Heir His Empire Can Last `Four Generations’

Grischa Rueschendorf/Bloomberg

Robert Kuok shovels dirt at a ground breaking ceremony for the Shangri-La Asia Ltd.'s new hotel in Guangzhou on Feb. 26, 2004. Through the unlisted family-owned holding company, Kerry Group Ltd., which he chairs, Kuok controls listed enterprises with a total market value of about $35 billion.

Kerry Group chairman Robert Kuok

Grischa Rueschendorf/Bloomberg

The world’s 39th-richest person, who named his Shangri-La hotel chain after the fictional utopia in which inhabitants enjoy unheard-of longevity, is trim, dapper and straight backed at 89. The public and private companies his family controls include investments in Beijing’s tallest building and cooking oil brands that have gained a 50 percent market share in China.

 

Kuok Says With Right Heir His Empire Can Last `Four Generations’

Imaginechina

Pedestrians walk past the headquarters of the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. Robert Kuok's daughter, Kuok Hui Kwong, 35, is executive director of SCMP Group Ltd., which Robert Kuok took control of in 1993, when he paid Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. $349 million for a 35 percent stake.

Kuok Says With Right Heir His Empire Can Last `Four Generations’

Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

Wilmar International Ltd.’s cooking oil brands —led by Jin Long Yu, meaning Golden Dragon Fish, seen in this photo — grease half of China’s woks and generate 48 percent of the company's revenue.

Kuok Says With Right Heir His Empire Can Last `Four Generations’

Eric Piermont/AFP/Getty Images

A waiter serves a customer at the bar at the Shangri-La Hotel in Paris.

Kuok Says With Right Heir His Empire Can Last `Four Generations’

Dario Pignatelli/Bloomberg

The development site for the Shangri-La Residences stands in Yangon, Myanmar on Nov. 20, 2012.

Photographer: Dario Pignatelli/Bloomberg

Enlarge image

Kuok Says With Right Heir His Empire Can Last `Four Generations’

Marco Flagg/Bloomberg

A visitor looks out the window of Island Shangri-La hotel, owned by Shangri-La Asia Ltd., in Hong Kong. Robert Kuok’s second son, Kuok Khoon Ean, 57, heads Shangri-La Asia, of which the family owns 50 percent.

 

Kerry Group chairman Robert Kuok

ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images

Robert Kuok, chairman of Kerry Group Ltd., holds a trophy during the 2012 CCTV China Economic Person of The Year award at China Central Television in Beijing on Dec. 12, 2012.

Kuok had accumulated a fortune of $19.4 billion as of Jan. 31, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Trim, dapper and straight backed at 89, he shows no signs of stopping there, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its March issue.

This year, the media-shy Malaysian-born magnate will likely open his 71st sumptuously appointed Shangri-La. Six of them are scheduled to be opened in the third quarter alone, including one perched in the Shard, the 72-story London skyscraper that’s the tallest office building in Western Europe.

Meanwhile, the public and private companies his family controls continue to pump money into his ancestral homeland, China, where his investments range from Beijing’s tallest building to cooking oil brands that have gained a 50 percent market share in the world’s most populous nation.

‘Personally Powerful’

One of Kuok’s companies, Singapore-listed Wilmar International Ltd. (WIL), is the world’s biggest processor of palm oil and eighth-biggest sugar producer.

Others operate shipping and logistics businesses, a property portfolio stretching from Paris to Sydney and East Asia’s most influential English-language newspaper, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

“He’s so vital, so active and continues to be so personally powerful,” says Timothy Dattels, San Francisco-based senior partner at U.S. buyout firm TPG Capital LP and a director of Kuok’s Hong Kong-listed Shangri-La Asia (69) Ltd. “I can’t imagine a day without him at the top.”

Others can, which is why the question of succession looms over the Kuok empire as the patriarch prepares to mark his 90th birthday in October.

Through the unlisted family-owned holding company, Kerry Group Ltd., which he chairs, Kuok controls listed enterprises with a total market value of about $40 billion.

As it stands, the family enterprises are seeking to recover from a rocky 2012 that featured some sharp share-price and profit drops.

First Interview

In his first interview with Western news media in 16 years, Kuok, who has eight children and numerous other relatives sprinkled through his executive ranks, says he won’t be worried when that day eventually comes.

“Everything on earth is dynamic,” he says in perfectly enunciated English. “I can only give my children a message, not money. If they follow it, we can go another three or four generations.”
Relatives run the most important of the Kuok businesses.

Kuok’s second son, Kuok Khoon Ean, 57, heads Shangri-La Asia, of which the family owns 50 percent.
A nephew, Kuok Khoon Hong, 63, co-founded and chairs Wilmar International, the largest Kuok-controlled company, with a market value of almost $20 billion, in which the Kuok family controls a 32 percent stake.

A daughter, Kuok Hui Kwong, 35, is executive director of SCMP Group Ltd., publisher of the 109-year-old South China Morning Post, which Kuok took control of in 1993, when he paid Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. $349 million for a 35 percent stake.

Focus Attention

As to who will succeed the master, most investors in Kuok enterprises focus attention on his eldest son, Kuok Khoon Chen, 58, who’s known as Beau.

Robert declined to confirm that Beau, who is deputy chairman of Kerry Group, will succeed him.
“Newshounds like excitement in their stories, whereas leadership of a business group is always a serious matter, and it would be wrong to put in writing any kind of assumption,” Kuok wrote in an e-mail following the interview.

Beau, who’s worked in his father’s businesses since 1978, is chairman of Kerry Properties Ltd. (683) The firm, 55 percent owned by Kerry Group, develops luxury apartments, shopping malls and offices mostly in China and Hong Kong.

“I know Beau, and he has a good team,” says Peter Churchouse, founder of Hong Kong-based property investor Portwood Capital Ltd. “But you have to wonder whether the second and third generations have the entrepreneurial and trading instincts that the father has.”

‘China Watcher’

The father’s instincts were honed over decades of personal and historical turbulence inconceivable to the generation vying to take over the family business.

That experience helped him become one of the first -- and best-connected -- foreign investors in China following Mao Zedong’s communist revolution.

“Robert is the best China watcher in the business,” says Simon Murray, chairman of Glencore International Plc, the world’s biggest commodities-trading company. “He understands the steel backbone of the Communist Party, but while other Hong Kong tycoons tend to be hugely subservient to Beijing, he is in no way obsequious.”

For all of Kuok’s prowess, 2012 was a tumultuous year for investors in his enterprises.

While Kerry Properties stock surged 57 percent in Hong Kong last year -- more than double the increase in the Hang Seng Index -- Wilmar International’s shares plummeted 33 percent, making it the worst performer in Singapore’s Straits Times Index. (FSSTI)

‘A Fraction’

The plunge wiped the equivalent of more than $8 billion from the company’s market value -- and almost $3 billion from the family’s fortune. This year, Wilmar’s share price has rebounded, rising 14 percent in January.

In any event, Kuok disputes Bloomberg’s valuation of his personal wealth at $19.4 billion; he says it’s “a fraction” of that amount, though he does not volunteer an alternative figure.

Wilmar’s woes stem from its massive exposure to China, where its cooking oil brands -- led by Jin Long Yu, meaning Golden Dragon Fish -- grease half the country’s woks and where it gets 48 percent of its revenue.

Beijing limited price increases on edible oils during most of 2011 and part of 2012, Wilmar said at the time.
Furthermore, the rising cost of soybeans, which Wilmar uses to produce cooking oil, hit a record $17.89 a bushel in September, squeezing earnings.

Rough Ride

In the first nine months of 2012, profit fell 29 percent to $779 million from $1.1 billion a year earlier.
Kuok’s Hong Kong-based companies have had a rough ride since the global financial crisis.

As of Jan. 31, Shangri-La Asia and Kerry properties shares were both down 19 percent compared with a 1 percent increase in the Hang Seng Index. Asked about such underperformance (583), Kuok says enigmatically, “It is right and proper for the investor to like or dislike a share.”

Underperformance isn’t the only problem at SCMP Group, whose share price had declined 69 percent as of Jan. 30 since Kuok acquired it. In 19 years, the South China Morning Post has churned through 11 editors, including one who served twice.

And although Kuok says his news executives publish without fear or favor, present and former staff members have publicly complained that the paper sometimes self-censors stories it thinks the Chinese government wouldn’t like.

‘Toned Down’

“Under his ownership, criticism of China has been toned down,” says David Plott, managing editor of Global Asia, a Seoul-based quarterly. “And if you look at the turnover of editors, it tells you one of two things: either Robert Kuok doesn’t know what he wants or he knows what he wants and he hasn’t gotten it.”
If that’s true, it might be a first for Kuok, whose life story has been one of single-minded achievement.

The son of Chinese immigrants who had settled in British- controlled Malaya, Robert Kuok Hock Nien -- his full name -- grew up speaking his parents’ Chinese Fuzhou dialect, English and even Japanese during Japan’s wartime occupation of the region.

Significantly, given the role China would play in Robert’s life, his mother encouraged him to achieve fluency in Mandarin and embrace his Chinese heritage.

Kuok’s parents ran a shop that sold rice, sugar and flour. Kuok recalls living with the smell of his addicted father’s opium pipe in his nostrils.

Family Business

Still, there was enough money for Robert to progress from a local English school to Raffles College in Singapore, where fellow students included Lee Kuan Yew, later the founder of modern Singapore.

Kuok never finished his studies. In 1941, Japanese troops stormed through the Malay Peninsula and in February 1942 captured Singapore. Kuok took a job with Mitsubishi Corp. With Japan’s defeat in 1945, his family resumed doing business under the British.

In 1949, after his father died, Robert; a brother, Philip; and other relatives founded Kuok Bros. Sdn., which later specialized in sugar refining.

Philip went on to become a Malaysian diplomat, and a second, much-admired brother, William, took an entirely different path again by joining the communist revolt against colonial rule. In 1953, William Kuok was killed by British troops in a jungle ambush.

Furtive Rendezvous

Robert Kuok, by contrast, used his English-language skills on visits to London to learn the sugar business while remaining based in Malaysia and later Singapore.

During the Cold War, he traded with both Western and communist blocs, meeting Cuba’s Fidel Castro and doing business with China’s Mao from as early as 1959.

In 1973, with China in the grip of the Cultural Revolution, Kuok was summoned to Hong Kong for a furtive rendezvous with two of Mao’s trade officials.

They confided that China was facing a sugar shortage. Kuok stepped into the breach, transferring his headquarters to Hong Kong that year.

It was a prescient move. In 1976, Mao died, and in 1978, Deng Xiaoping tore down the so-called Bamboo Curtain, initiating reforms that sparked 34 years of surging economic growth.

In 1984, Kuok opened his first Shangri-La on the mainland. The following year, he partnered with China’s foreign trade ministry to begin building the China World Trade Center (600007) in Beijing.

Enduring Mystery

In 1988, at his nephew Khoon Hong’s suggestion, he branched out into edible oils. By 1993, Coca-Cola Co. was impressed enough with Kuok’s China connections to form a bottling joint venture with him.
That lasted until 2008, when Coke bought back Kerry Group’s stake for an undisclosed amount, both companies pronouncing the outcome a success.

The family’s history of that period harbors an enduring mystery: a 16-year parting of the ways between Robert and Khoon Hong, who in 1991 left the Kuok Group to set up Wilmar with Indonesian entrepreneur Martua Sitorus.

It wasn’t until 2007 that Robert acquired a 32 percent stake in Wilmar and injected most of his agribusiness into it. Neither Robert nor his nephew would discuss the split.

For all his triumphs in the capitalist world, Robert Kuok says the biggest influences on his life were his devoutly Buddhist mother and his communist revolutionary brother, William.

‘Good Boys’

“Otherwise, probably I would have been an arrogant middle-class Chinese, only caring about materialism, worldly pleasures and fleshpot pleasures,” Kuok says, his moist eyes betraying a momentary sadness.

“When I am tempted, I think of what William went through. He sacrificed his life trying to help the underprivileged.”

Kuok says he has tried to pass on those values by not cocooning his children in privilege. Nor, he adds, does he place much emphasis on scholastic qualifications, including MBA degrees, when hiring senior staff.

Beau Kuok earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Monash University in Melbourne; Ean holds a similar qualification from the University of Nottingham in England. Kuok describes Beau and Ean as “good boys.”

Among members of the extended family, Kuok speaks highly of Khoon Hong, his nephew at Wilmar.

‘Stupid Ones’

“There are stupid ones, there are mean ones, but he’s one of the cleverest,” Robert Kuok says. None of the second- generation Kuoks would comment for this article. Kuok says they make their own decisions. “I never control my children,” he says. “We are a very liberal, democratic family.”

The perils of succession are acute in Kuok’s bailiwick, according to researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Their study of 250 family-controlled businesses in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan from 1987 to 2005 shows that stocks typically plunged 60 percent over an eight-year period before, during and after a founder’s relinquishing control.

Joseph Fan, the finance professor who led the research, attributes this wealth destruction to the inability of the patriarch to pass on, even to family members, his most valuable, intangible assets, including relationships with governments and banks. “The founder is the key asset,” Fan says.

That’s why, Fan says, so many tycoons remain at the helm of their businesses well into their 80s and don’t disclose succession plans.

Octogenarian Rivals

Last year, following investor concerns over feuds that have split the second generation of some of Hong Kong’s most prominent families, two of Kuok’s octogenarian billionaire rivals in the property business, Li Ka-shing of Cheung Kong Holdings Ltd. and Lee Shau-kee of Henderson Land Development Co., finally disclosed which of their progeny would eventually take control.

TPG Capital’s Dattels says succession isn’t a concern when it comes to the Kuok businesses.

“There’s only one Robert Kuok, there’s no doubt,” he says. “But he has instilled his business philosophy deep into the family. With what he has built, they are well set to continue, whatever happens.”

Back at his Hong Kong headquarters, Kuok asks an assistant to bring him a favorite quotation. Written by his mother in Chinese and engraved on a steel plate, the aphorism reads:

“If my children and grandchildren can be like me, then they don’t require material inheritance. But if they are not like me, then of what use is my wealth to them?”

Those words beg the question investors in Kuok’s far-flung businesses are asking now more than ever: How like Robert Kuok are his heirs?

Congrats to Asia and to Thai business taipan Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi---originally from Bangkok City's Chinatown---for soon becoming world-class and globally-competitive! Inspiring!

(Image below sourced from bloomberg.com)

Thai Billionaire Nears Win on F&N After OUE Sticks to Bid

By Joyce Koh - Jan 22, 2013 12:00 AM GMT+0800 Bloomberg News

Thailand’s richest man came closer to winning control of Fraser & Neave Ltd. (FNN) after a rival group failed to top his S$13.8 billion ($11.2 billion) offer for the 130-year-old property and beverage company.

A group led by Overseas Union Enterprise Ltd. (OUE) said yesterday it won’t match Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi’s Jan. 18 offer of S$9.55 a share. The OUE group had bid S$9.08 a share in November.

Overseas Union Enterprise Not Increasing Offer Price for F&N

Munshi Ahmed/Bloomberg

A woman shops for Fraser & Neave Ltd. soft drinks at a supermarket in Singapore.

A woman shops for Fraser & Neave Ltd. soft drinks at a supermarket in Singapore. Photographer: Munshi Ahmed/Bloomberg

OUE’s decision gives Charoen the upper hand after a two- month battle over company that has assets from soft drinks to serviced apartments. The billionaire has built a 40 percent stake in F&N in his push to win the biggest takeover of a Singapore-based company.

“It’s all over,” said Jonathan Foster, Singapore-based director of special situations at Religare Capital Markets. “All said and done, S$9.55 is not a bad outcome. While it’s not quite as good as what it could have got, I think the vast majority of F&N shareholders would be satisfied considering where the stock was trading before the saga erupted.”

Charoen’s TCC Assets Ltd. still needs to gain the support of a majority of shareholders. His bid is 2 percent lower than F&N’s closing price of S$9.74 yesterday.

“Charoen seems pretty convinced that his S$9.55 offer is as generous as he’s going to get,” said Jason Hughes, head of premium client management at IG Markets in Singapore. “In all likelihood, there would be enough willing sellers at that price. On the balance of probability, F&N is now TCC’s for the taking.”

F&N shares have gained 22 percent since Charoen announced made his initial investment in the company on July 18, three times the gain in the Singapore benchmark Straits Times Index. (FSSTI)

Impossible Takeover

OUE, a Singapore-based property company, had enlisted Japanese brewer Kirin Holdings Co. in its November bid. OUE would get the company’s property business and Kirin would take the food and beverage unit, under that pact. The Japanese brewer would offer S$2.7 billion for F&N’s food and beverage business, if the group won enough support to complete the takeover.

“It would be impossible for Kirin to get the beverage business,” said Mikihiko Yamato, deputy head of research for JI Asia in Tokyo. “It’s unimaginable for the rival ThaiBev to hand it over to Kirin.”

ThaiBev or Thai Beverage Pcl (THBEV), which owns shares in F&N, is Thailand’s biggest beer maker that’s controlled by Charoen. Kirin, which has a 14.8 percent stake in F&N, hasn’t decided what it would do with its shares, said Kan Yamamoto, the company’s spokesman. He declined to comment on the OUE decision.

Cutting Losses

OUE said yesterday that to win majority shareholder support it would have had to raise its bid “to a level which is no longer as attractive.” The decision led to a lapse in its offer, which expired yesterday.

“OUE decided to cut their losses and keep on going with their own business,” Hughes said.

Charoen, 68, agreed to buy a 22 percent stake in F&N in July, sparking a fight for its assets. He had offered S$8.88 a share in September. His latest offer will remain open until Feb. 4, F&N said in a statement.

The Thai billionaire was born and raised in Bangkok’s Chinatown district. He bid for the rights to operate distilleries during a liberalization of the nation’s liquor industry, before expanding into beer, alcohol, sugar, and packaging businesses.

Charoen’s unlisted business, TCC Group, has a real estate unit. His Thai Beverage, which sells the Chang brand of beer, gets almost all its revenue from its home market.

OUE Executive Chairman Stephen Riady is a son of Mochtar Riady, who controls Indonesia’s Lippo Group, with businesses ranging from real estate and financial services to food across Asia. If successful, it would be the biggest ever acquisition of a Singapore-based company, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

***

A previous Bloomberg article on August 9, 2012 had this profile of the Thai billionaire:



Chinatown Billionaire

Charoen, 68, was born and raised in Bangkok’s Chinatown district after his parents moved from Shantau in China. His business interests extend to other industries such as property development, insurance. Based on his 70 percent stake in Thai conglomerate Berli Jucker Public Co. and a 66 percent holding in Thai Beverage, he now has $5.9 billion worth of stock, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Thai Bev, which sells Chang -- Thailand’s No. 2 beer brand -- as well as spirits and soft drinks, got only about 3.7 percent of its 2011 revenue of 132 billion baht ($4.2 billion) from outside its home country, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Thai Bev in 2006 sold shares in Singapore after anti- alcohol protesters blocked an offering in its home market. The company says it is now is looking to expand overseas.

Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours. --- Swedish proverb


("Dressed for Success", released on 1988, was the second single from the Swedish pop duo Roxette's 1988 album Look SDharp! This image sourced from en.wikipedia.org)



(This Swedish image and flag below sourced from thelocal.se)

The editor-in-chief of Metro Society magazine, Raul Manzano, invited me to write five features on five prominent business leaders who are also top philanthropists of the Philippines, for their latest January 2013 issue. These are (not in any order)---Henry Sy, John Gokongwei, Jr., George S. K. Ty, Lucio C. Tan and Andrew Tan. The cover story of this special issue is Ambassador Manuel "Manolo" Lopez and Carlos Ott.



I am herewith sharing a news story sent to me by ABS-CBN Publishing Corporation on this magazine:

METRO SOCIETY MAGAZINE'S ANNUAL BUSINESS ISSUE

"2013 marks Metro Society’s decade in the industry. With that, we open with a bang with one of our most celebrated issues, the business issue. January is the beginning and marks many things… New Year’s resolutions, fresh starts and brighter tomorrows. Metro Society has a few ideas of its own to welcome 2013."

"We are especially looking forward to celebrating our 10^th year anniversary on October and as a thank you to all our readers, we plan to make every issue leading up to that outdo all issues that have come before. We promise more pages, more people, more in depth pieces and of course, more parties and access to the metro’s hippest events."

"We open our January magazine with an exciting new project by Rockwell land, The Proscenium. This development which, in its early stages already promises to set a new standard of modern and efficient living, has been making waves in the real estate development, architectural and interior design scene."

"The collaboration between international design and architectural genius Manny Ott and the Lopez development group has raised curiosity and excitement for individuals in and out of the industry alike. Whether you are a developer, a buyer or merely a bystander, it is definitely one building to watch out for. This project is set to elevate the market and change the standard in apartment living."

"For the business issue, we shifted gears a bit. We usually do stories on upper-crust society and focus on their lifestyles, but now, we took the entrepreneurial world by storm by choosing 10 families who are not only known for being in the highest of castes in Manila Society but are truly considered to be the business elite."

"The pieces about these families are in-depth and brutally honest. We tell it how it is and show you sides to these powerhouses that have not been brought up before. From the empires they have built to the personal lives they lead, each and every individual included plays a part in these family fortunes."

"One thread that waves its way into each story is the economic uplifting of the Philippines though these big businesses as well as the charitable endeavours which make them every bit as worthy to hold on to such affluence. These legacies have become a part of our history and it is a privilege to feature these stories in the pages of Metro Society."

"Asides from the accepted entrepreneurial minds, we also took the opportunity to introduce 10 fresh business owners who may not have the same experience but definitely have one immense advantage over the old-timers… their youth. These young go getters have all that it takes to run a company; intelligence, business savvy, and drive. Hand-picked by Metro Society, we have no doubt that these young industrialists will make it far and follow in the footsteps of those who came before them to continue paving the way for Philippine economic growth."

"This January, we invite you to indulge as we start the New Year with an abundance of interesting individuals and material possessions. Be sure to compare the lifestyles and wardrobes of beauty fiends Trish Xavier and Tsin Pajaro - Inocian.  The 2 beautiful women have made it their personal and professional business to beautify all of Manila, one person at a time. Relax at The Spa in Powerplant mall in our spa bonding section or check out fun paper, writing and gift wrapping finds in our shopping section where we feature the one-stop gift shop, Scribe."

"For those of you who want to start a year in fashion, turn to our Objects of Desire section and feast on the ornate gold clutches of Beatriz accessories, Cocorose London’s intricately designed foldable flats, and the new handbag selections of Hermes and Gucci. Our fashion pages feature the full fall/winter 2012/2013 collection of Louis Vuitton for both, men and women, a perfect opportunity to find extravagant buys for those of you who want to spoil yourself or a loved one. Speaking of loved ones, check out the men in this issue. Both athletes and both in great shape, bachelor Darren Hartman is now with Kaya FC football club and nobleman Paolo Cabalfin shows us a thing or two about building muscle in his newly opened training center, Focus Athletics."

"Your invitation to the most happening events has arrived in our socials pages. From fun foodie events such as Spirals second coming, and the opening of TWG, to the hippest parties like Jewelmer’s Joaillerie’s spring/summer 2013 collection launch, PMAP’s 25^th year anniversary, Johnny Walker’s trip on the voyager, Hublot’s 30^th anniversary, and Hermes’ silk party. We end on a high note with Tessa Prieto Valdes’ big birthday bash wherein she shows us all how to throw one hell of a celebration!"

"When you grab the latest issue of Metro Society, January 2013, do not forget to read about the life and business of Jesus Amado Araneta of the Araneta Center. This heartwarming tale of business, love, and family will be sure to leave you amazed at such a man and truly proud to call yourself Filipino. Grab a copy now!"