Martin Young can make things happen and now he wants to bring back polo to Hong Kong

WHEN MARTIN YOUNG moved into the money business, he had no idea how quickly his vision would explode. After seven years in the British Army, he worked with investment bank Merrill Lynch in Florida for four years, before moving on to South African firm Old Mutual International in Frankfurt. Then he had a dream.

'I am one of those dream people,' confesses the young founder and chief executive of private banking firm Meyado International. 'I have these ideas and off I go. In my dream, there are 365 days in a year and I take 65 days vacation. I have a client per day, that is 300 clients. I look after them for the rest of my life, they will all be multi-millionaires and I will be one, too, because I look after them.'

By the end of the first year in business, Meyado had an office in Frankfurt and employed nine people. Less than a decade later, the firm and its sub-companies employ 260 people and have 6,000 clients with GBP5 billion (about HK$55 billion) under management. Last year, they acquired Cameron Butler, a financial advisory firm with 10 years experience in Asia and operations in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, Brunei and Shanghai.

Making big dreams into even bigger reality seems par for the course in the Young way of doing business. He was in Hong Kong last week to present details of a 'good example of a Meyado-type project'. High-net-worth individuals are being offered shares in a company that recycles galvanised steel in an environmentally friendly fashion.

As with so many of Mr Young's business activities, he learned of the revolutionary process through a game of polo. At an after-game wine tasting, he met the man whose company had bought the recycling technology but could not afford to go into production. Initially, he turned down the option of investing US$1.47 million (about HK$11.4) in the struggling firm. Due diligence turned up debts, class-action lawsuits and various other signs of financial crisis. But the idea had taken root.

Today, Meyado has a controlling interest in US corporation Meretec, which has an operational, profitable plant producing premium-grade steel scrap and high-quality zinc dust. Oxygen and hydrogen are the only by-products, as opposed to the damaging cadmium, released when zinc burns off steel in existing recycling processes.