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Liz Heron

SAMUEL POON YIU-KIN retired in January at 45 with so much money in the bank that he never needs to work again.

In just 20 years, the financial whizz-kid rose to the pinnacle of his career and capped it with four years as managing director of investment bank Merrill Lynch (Asia Pacific).

After such achievements, many of his fellow MBA graduates of the 1980s would be happy to switch their attention to acquiring a luxury villa and developing a passion for golf or yachting.

But Mr Poon stepped down early because he wants to get involved in education policy-making in Hong Kong - and become a secondary school teacher.

The investment banker revealed his unusual career plan as we stood in Merrill Lynch's vast, empty, 17th storey boardroom, gazing down at  looping aerial highways and walkways of Admiralty.

Involuntarily, the image of bankers jumping out of skyscrapers flashed through my mind - not fleeing stock market crashes but parachuting cheerfully into the local school yard. Was he setting a new trend?

'What I would like to do is to find a platform to contribute to education policy-making in Hong Kong,' Mr Poon explained later over a cappuccino at the building's basement Starbucks.

'This could be anything, but it's not going to be Legco. I don't want to go into politics. It could be a professorship, an education official, a think-tank, an education consultant or a journalist.

'The area that I am interested in is: how do you allocate resources within the education sector? That can serve the two goals of education, which are improving human capital and creating an equitable society, where everyone has equal life chances.

'But once I have got set up, I would like to go into a secondary school to teach, particularly an underprivileged one. I think I could become a very good teacher of liberal studies but I am not qualified.

'The education policy is the macro-level - if you do it right, you can influence millions of students. But teaching is the best way of affecting individual lives.'

Equally at home in the boardroom and Admiralty's coffee shops, Mr Poon has the easy familiarity of a golden boy with hundreds of successful deals behind him.

These include selling Hong Kong Telecom to PCCW in Asia's biggest take-over deal, creating the largest bank in Singapore through a contested take-over, and acquiring tobacco firms worth US$1 billion to create UK tobacco giant BAT Industries.

But he is preparing for his new career in education with the deliberation of an entrepreneur putting together his first  business plan.

His first step was to sign up for an MEd in Education Policy and Administration at Chinese University. Then he landed a contract to teach applied corporate finance at CUHK, Peking University, and National Chengchi University of Taiwan, under a joint MBA programme set up by their three business schools.

He also accepted an invitation from Professor Felice Lieh Mak, chairwoman of the English Schools Foundation, to become the ESF's honorary treasurer - a jump into the deep end of school administration issues.

'I have to have the building blocks that will help me to pursue these dual tracks at policy and school level,' he said, adding that as a banker he was never comfortable seeing clients unless he knew what he was doing.  'That is why I am going back to CUHK to do my MEd.

'I also need to start learning to teach and so I am now teaching at three universities. I have never worked in a school, so I am very fortunate to have been invited to join the executive committee of the ESF.

'It is a very steep learning curve for me and it is an eye-opener because of the public dimension of what you do. In the public sector, the checks and balances are really in public opinion and we are making a lot of progress in terms of asking schools to be more accountable.'

Last month  Mr Poon's first conscious attempt to adapt some of his ideas and experience as a banker to benefit education was  launched.

EdExchange, a donation agency modelled on a stock exchange, aims to match private donors with innovative enrichment projects in schools.

Teachers submit  projects, much as companies would place an 'initial public offer' on the stock exchange, and donors use the web-based system to select worthy beneficiaries in the manner of investors buying equities.

A team of 15 volunteer teacher trainees at Hong Kong Institute of Education, which provides free premises for EdExchange, vets projects submitted by teachers for inclusion on the website.

EdExchange administration officer Ray Lee Jing-sang said: 'The project is going really well. There are more than 40 proposals from schools on our website already and four have been fully funded.'

More than 10 donors - both individual and corporate - have signed up so far, with one individual donor giving $100,000.  Backers include the Bank of East Asia, Yue Yuen Industrial (Holdings) and Linklaters.

Haven of Hope Sunnyside School and Hostel in Tseung Kwan O, which serves 104 children with severe and multiple learning difficulties aged six to 18, won $9,270 for physiotherapy equipment.

Susan Ho Siu-shan, its administrative officer, said the stepper machine and two resistance pedal exercise machines would enable more children with mobility problems to strengthen their lower limbs.

'Our children's needs are so diverse that there is always some new type of equipment that we need,' she said.

To fit in the various building blocks of his new career, Mr Poon flies to Taipei on Mondays to teach at National Chengchi University in the evening. The next morning, he flies back to Hong Kong for his MEd classes at Chinese University on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. On Thursday, he returns to CUHK as a teacher in its business school, and, on Friday he flies to Beijing, where he teaches at Peking University on Saturday mornings.

'The only evening I can have dinner with my wife without any pressure is Sundays,' he said.

So what prompted him to take up such a challenging new direction? 'It all goes back to my own personal development,' said Mr Poon. 'I was very fortunate to have a very good English teacher when I was in Form Four. I was just a normal Hong Kong student spending all my time playing soccer. But he inspired me and opened my eyes to the fact that I have to think, so I shaped up.

'After I came back to Hong Kong in 1998 I got involved in the education committee of my church, the Hong Kong Chinese Church of Christ in Ho Man Tin. I started following the education news more closely. We also ran into budget difficulties and there was a lot of debate about how much money should be spent on education.

'I felt that it was a very high priority. Everybody criticised education policy and the Education and Manpower Bureau. I felt that a lot of the policies were very good but attracted a lot of objections when implemented.

'So being a banker, my hunch was that actually I probably would be able to contribute. My skill-set is to apply theories to real-life situations and make things happen.

'I am 45, so I feelthat I have to do it now, otherwise it will be too late. Education is a long-term thing, and I think it will take me 10 to 15 years to see any outcome.'

Mr Poon insists he is not simply trying to apply the ideology of free-market economics directly to education, in the manner of right-wing economist Milton Friedman's controversial school voucher idea.

'My observation is that a direct application of some of the market concepts would lead to undesirable outcomes, such as creating inequality,' he said.

'What I am trying to do over the next couple of years is to expose myself to the education system, so that maybe, with my experience from merchant banking, I would be able to come up with some ideas about how to adapt market-based principles in a way that is suited to the education sector in Hong Kong.'

He has already come up with another match-making idea, which could become his next project. The aim is to lay on after-school activities for children in disadvantaged areas - and help university students develop the interpersonal skills demanded by employers.

Groups of neighbouring schools could host a rotating, low-cost activity programme led by undergraduates that would keep disaffected youngsters off the streets.

'We will give  kids in underprivileged areas a safe, secure environment to play and learn more.  We are making use of an under-utilised resource - the school premises - and we are helping university students to develop their skills-set. Anybody interested in supporting this programme contact me.'

EdExhange can be found at www.edexchange.org. Mr Poon can be contacted by e-mail at samuel.poon@edexhange.org

'It is a very steep learning curve for me ... because of the public dimension of what you do'

Samuel Poon

Photo: Oliver Tsang



Wheeler dealer in a class of his own