CHARLIE MAK HAS heard enough stories to make any society page sing. But because they came to him in his capacity as managing director of private wealth management at Morgan Stanley, they are strictly off limits.
'The typical question that I ask people is: How did you make your first million bucks?' he says. 'Asia is new wealth. With the old wealth, you know where they inherited their money from. You can learn a lot from your clients.
'I have met almost all the who's whos in non-Japan Asia in the past 15 years. The wealthiest people, powerful people, interesting people - I have tonnes of war stories but of course I cannot tell them.'
That first US$1 million is simply not enough, however, to enlist the services of Mr Mak and his team.
'At Morgan Stanley we talk about US$10 million to start as a PWM [private wealth management] client. We go for the true high end,' he says.
Mr Mak has been with the company since 1980, starting out as an accountant in charge of regulatory reporting in the New York office. Bored with crunching numbers and armed with an MBA from Pace University in New York, he switched to the legal and compliance department before making the move into sales in 1986, when he started doing business in Asia. By 1989, with Hong Kong drooping post-Tiananmen, he moved back here full time.