KerajaanRakyat l MALAYSIA'S richest man, Tan Sri Robert Kuok, is often referred to as the "Sugar King" but the man himself says he does not like the title and deems it a "fake fame".
Kuok, whose empire includes the Shangri-La hotel chain, prefers the title "Hotel King" instead.
"I like hotel but the word king' is just a fake one," the 87-year-old billionaire said in an interview with China Central Television (CCTV) recently.
Major local Chinese newspapers have carried reports about the interview as the low-profile and media-shy tycoon rarely agrees to being interviewed.
Among the topics he talked about were his foray into the travel industry in China, the venture in the sugar refinery business and his mother.
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Kuok said that when he first went into China's travel industry, the tourist facilities there, especially toilets, were poor and the country was unable to attract international tourists.
But "I had a feeling that China would have the most prosperous travel industry as it has historical relics and sites", said Kuok, who built the first Shangri-La Hotel in Hangzhou in the 1980s.
Today, there are 72 Shangri-La hotels throughout the world, and 34 of these are in China. There are 45 hotels under construction now, and 28 are in China.
Kuok said the hotel, as a service industry, depended on its employees, from the head manager to the menial worker, to serve their customers. Thus, it has been his principle ever since he first became involved in this industry to take care of the employees.
The biggest responsibility of the board of directors is to take care of its employees, he said.
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Recalling the early years, Kuok said his mother, Tang Kak Ji, and his brothers decided to form Kuok Brothers Ltd after his father passed away in 1948.
During one of the board of directors' meetings, Kuok said he suggested that they invest all their money in the sugar refinery business.
Besides rice and wheat, granulated sugar was also very important in the food sector, he reasoned.
"If children threw tantrums at night, the adults just needed to give them some sugar and they would remain quiet," he said.
Granulated sugar was cheap so it was a business that could earn profits, he added.
"Sugar is unlike petrochemicals where sometimes there is demand and sometimes there isn't. At that time, the information technology era had not started yet. So the simplest and wisest business to get rich in was the sugar refinery business," he said.
Kuok said building a successful business empire was 90% dependent on hard work. The rest was intellect. On his success in the sugar refinery business, Kuok said he was young then and could speak English.
He said the businessmen he went to meet in London and New York were curious that he, a Chinese, could speak good English.
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