In Hong Kong, business is never dull. Its role as the city's de facto religion has frequently thrust the business world to the forefront of Hong Kong life, and reporting the big business stories has grown to be a key component of the South China Morning Post.
Even when the financial wheels turned a little more slowly, there always seemed to be enough larger-than-life characters and dramatic events to keep the Post's business columns extremely lively.
Scandals? There have been more than a few. Crashes and boom times? Enough to line wallets, make and break mighty institutions and, sometimes, bring down the powerful men that forged them.
When Hong Kong Stock Exchange chairman Ronald Li Fook-shiu faced a bloodthirsty media following his unprecedented decision to close the exchange for four days during the crash of October 1987, the Post carried the now-famous picture of the tycoon jutting a finger at a reporter who had the temerity to question his handling of his own financial affairs during the crisis.
An epic tantrum followed, but three short years later, Mr Li was looking a little more subdued. Again on the front page of the Post, he was pictured in the back of a prison van after being found guilty of two charges of corruption and accepting a reward while exchange chairman, and sentenced to four years in jail.
Mr Li was not the only wealthy corrupt operator shamed on the newspaper's pages. The Carrian scandal, following the collapse of the Carrian property empire in 1983 with debts of $8 billion, was a tale of corruption, greed, international intrigue, suicide and murder - one of the most brazen financial scams the world has witnessed.