Grandmaster of property

Four years have passed by since Tan Chin Nam died. If he had lived, he would have been 96-years-old today, having been born on this date in 1926. However, he had died in 2018. 

Normally on the 21st of October every year, I would be spending the day celebrating the anniversary of my alma mater's founding in Penang but by a quirk of fate, I found myself in Kuala Lumpur in 2018 to attend the convocation of one of my nephews. And it was on that day in  Kuala Lumpur that word arrived in the late afternoon of the passing of the Malaysian Chess Federation's honorary life president. As I mentioned, it was a strange quirk of fate for me to be in KL which enabled me to pay my last respects to this grand old man of Malaysian chess.

Over the last one year of so, I have been digging through my collection of old newspaper cuttings to reproduce stories on Tan Chin Nam in this blog. A few months ago courtesy of Edwin Lam, I came across another feature story, this time bearing a deadline of 10 June 2006 in the Business Times newspaper in Singapore. Chess and horse-racing were only mentioned in passing as the main attention was on his business empire. Nevertheless, the feature was an interesting read and it complemented his memoirs, Never Say I Assume!, that came out in the same year.

Grandmaster of Property

TAN Chin Nam, whose name translates literally from the Chinese as Tan Develop South, may not be a household name in Singapore. But the seasoned Malaysian property developer was instrumental in two landmarks in Singapore - the Shangri-La Hotel on leafy Orange Grove Road and Parkway Parade in the east.

This was revealed in the 80-year=old businessman's recently published memoirs, entitled Never Say I Assume, which were written jointly with Mr Tan's friend Larry Parr.

The 293-page book provided a colourful sketch of Mr Tan's early years in pre-independence Malaysia, his stint as a rice trader and supplier to the British army, his 10-year tenure as a compradore for Bangkok Bank, his groundbreaking property projects in Malaysia and Singapore, his association with the first prime minister of Malaysia, and his passion for thoroughbreds and chess.

He has been widely credited as the man who built the first condominium in the Malaysian capital, through his former listed company Tan & Tan. The project is aptly called Desa Kudalari (which means running horse in Malay) as it is sited near the former turf club, which has since been transformed into the home of the 88-storey Petronas Twin Towers.

The tycoon, who was last year ranked by Malaysian Business magazine as 28th richest man in Malaysia with known assets in excess of RM500 million (S$216.41 million), has earned many other accolades along the way. They include "Grandmaster of Property", "Mr Low Cost" after he was the first developer of houses in Malaysia for a mere RM5,000 apiece; the maiden Property Man of the Year award for Malaysian developers in 1992; the only horse owner to have won the prestigious Melbourne Cup three times with two horses; and honorary life president of the Malaysian Chess Federation.

Despite his many achievements, the octogenarian appeared friendly and sincere during a recent interview at his suite at the Shangri-La in Singapore. He wore a short-sleeved shirt and declined to don a jacket for the photographer. He disclosed that he had turned down offers of free accommodation at the hotel that he helped develop in the 1970s. He had ready and easy answers to many questions during the interview.

Mr Tan has continued to keep a finger on the pulse of major corporate and political events on both sides of the Causeway. When asked about the state of bilateral ties between Malaysia and Singapore, Mr Tan readily gave his views. "From day one I find the chemistry of the two countries not workable," he lamented. He said the Singapore approach was too "black and white" while Malaysia adopted a "grey" stance. "You cannot say who is right and who is wrong," the diplomatic businessman said.

Mr Tan proposed the formation of a private company to help resolve all the problems on both sides of the narrow Johor strait - the sale of Malaysian water to Singapore, the stalled bridge project to replace the Causeway linking the two countries, the redevelopment of the Malaysian railway land in Singapore and other issues.

All the items in the list of outstanding bilateral problems could be injected into the private company. The items can then be classified as "assets" and "liabilities" to both countries.

The company can then be floated as a sizeable public company, he said. But there must be an element of goodwill. "I appeal to Singaporeans to follow Tunku's style. Instead of meetings, go to the golf club, socialise a little bit," he said, referring to his good friend - the late Tunku Abdul Rahman, who was the first premier of Malaysia.

The reference to the late premier didn't come as a surprise. His friendship with the late prime minister is well known and is chronicled in Mr Tan's memoirs.

In the autobiography, Mr Tan fondly called his friend "the George Washington of Malaysia" as the Tunku had helped Malaysia secure its independence from the British in 1957.

Mr Tan disclosed that he was invited to a black tie dinner with the late premier in 1959 after the Tunku saw Mr Tan "hacking away" at the Royal Selangor Golf Club - a rather posh establishment for the 33-year-old Mr Tan then. "The dinner went well. The Tunku and I shared a common interest in horses and the destiny of Malaysia," Mr Tan wrote.

Mr Tan said he never benefited financially from his long friendship with the Tunku, who died a relatively poor man although he was a prince. In fact, Mr Tan disclosed that he helped pay the Tunku's income tax of about $40,000. "The truth is that I owed the Tunku a favour that had nothing to do with his loyalty during the racial riots of 1969," Mr Tan said, without elaborating.

Friendship, sincerity and loyalty appears to be a consistent theme in Mr Tan's life and business dealings. This is reflected by his long association with businessmen such as "sugar king" Robert Kuok, who is still the richest Malaysian, the late property developer Ang Toon Chew of Petaling Garden, and Chin Sophonpanich, who founded Bangkok Bank.

Although Mr Kuok is well-known for his current control of the chain of Shangri-La hotels worldwide. Mr Tan's early involvement in the project in Singapore in 1969 is less well know.

Mr Tan fell in love with the 12-acre plot of land at Orange Grove almost instantaneously. "Robert Kuok wasn't involved (initially). We (Mr Tan and Mr Ang of Petaling Garden) came, we saw, we bought. It took about one minute to make our decision," Mr Tan said.

Mr Kuok entered the picture subsequently and they jointly developed the landmark hotel. "Robert Kuok is Robert Kuok. After some time, he became senior partner," Mr Tan laughed. He then explained: "Robert Kuok was better capitalised than us at that time as we were basically condominium builders."

Mr Tan was sketchy about details, merely saying his stake was diluted while Mr Kuok raised his stake in the hotel. Apart from cashing out to raise money for his other housing projects, Mr Tan realised that it was not possible for the two men to run the hotel. "There can only be one tiger on the hill," he quipped.

But success such as the development of the famed Shangri-La Hotel didn't come easy for Mr Tan, whose rubber-trader father lost his fortune following the crash of rubber price in the 1920s, turning to opium for solace.

Mr Tan and his late brother, Kim Yeow, founded Wah Seong - which is Chinese for "Chinese merchant" - in 1946 to trade in commodities including Burmese rice. The business sank when its shipments were grabbed by pirates. They revived Wah Seong to handle food shipments to the British prisons and hospitals in colonial Malaya. Work was hard and the profit margin slim, but Mr Tan relished the memory of delivering potatoes and taking breaks after work at Penang's esplanade.

Like many Chinese traders then, Mr Tan and his brother ventured into property development. Their first project was a row of five shophouses in Penang in 1948. They sold each one for 5,000 Straits dollars per shop.

Mr Tan undertook a grander project in 1959 together with the late Mr Ang. The project was Petaling Garden, which today forms part of Petaling Jaya - the first satellite town to support the development of the bustling Malaysian capital. But success got into his head. "In 1959 I figured there was nothing I could not do well," he wrote.

He became a compradore - a middleman between an enterprise and the Chinese community - for Bangkok Bank in 1959. Like many compradores, Mr Tan took a commission on loans and foreign exchange deals in return for guaranteeing all the transactions.

He recalled Bangkok Bank's late founder Chin Sophonpanich as telling him that he would be very good in the job within five years - although Mr Tan reckoned he needed only one year to be a successful compradore.

Mr Tan revealed that he made about one million Malaysian dollars as a compradore in the ensuing decade - but lost it overnight in 1969 when a loan for the same amount soured. "I was injured in terms of my personal wealth, reaching deeply into my pockets to repay the bank," he wrote.

Despite being crushed by the banking experience, Mr Tan is believed to have maintained close contact with the banking family until today, although Mr Chin died in 1988.

Fortunately for Mr Tan, he has had more hits than misses in life. One hit was the development of Parkway Parade in the 1970s in Singapore by Parkway Holdings, the listed vehicle of the Tan family on both sides of the Causeway.

But Parkway, which was run by his nephew Tony Tan Choon Keat, came under fire from minority shareholders in 1995 for its ill-timed Harbourview project in the US. The showdown at the annual general meeting lasted more than four hours, deemed by this newspaper as a record in local corporate history.

Mr Tan's team won the day. He cashed out of Parkway two years later after the share price appreciated by over 60 per cent. His memoirs said success in developing Parkway Parade gave him the confidence to undertake his biggest-ever project, known as Mid Valley City in Kuala Lumpur.

The plan to build the biggest mall in South-east Asia was daring on all counts, due to the retail glut in the late 1990s and the onset of the regional financial crisis.

Fortunately for Mr Tan and family, the bet turned out to be a winning one. Big turnouts can now be seen almost daily at the well-designed mall along the busy Federal Highway, which has more than 1.7 million square feet of net retail space - a lot bigger than Singapore's Suntec City which has a retail area of over one million sq ft.

Another success was the Tans' Australian vehicle Ipoh Ltd, named after the tin mining capital of Perak, whose portfolio included the grand Queen Victoria Building in Sydney.

The Tan family sold its controlling stake in Ipoh to the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation four years ago in a deal valuing the entire company at A$260 million (S$304.8 million).

"I trade and build things. Which are what I do best," Mr Tan declared.

Despite his tendency to trade assets like commodities, Mr Tan and family have kept Mid Valley in Kuala Lumpur for investment income. The asset generated RM171 million in revenue last year. Pre-tax profit from the property alone stood at RM92 million, according to the latest annual report of parent company IGB Corporation.

IGB is in the midst of adding a high-end appendage known as The Gardens which, when fully completed by 2008, will have a shopping centre with a net floor area of 800,000 sq ft, two office towers, and two five-star hotels in a garden environment. The Tan empire is now run mainly by Mr Tan's son Robert Tan Chung Meng and daughter Lei Cheng. [Editorial note: Robert Tan was the son of Tan Kim Yeow, not Tan Chin Nam, and was thus the latter's nephew.]

He has full faith in them. "The second generation can turn out to be an improvement of the old man," he quipped.

A rather modest statement for a man who has not only made it big in Malaysia but also in his southern ventures in Singapore and Australia. And he did it in style, guided by his strong principles, lessons from his early business failures and his many friends in the business and political arena.