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SCMP Reporter

Jonathan Choi Koon-shum's pre-dawn sorties to buy the day's catch  prepared him for the top position at Sun Wah

PRE-DAWN DASHES TO the fish market in Kennedy Town where snap decisions were crucial were the precursor to entrepreneur Jonathan Choi Koon-shum's rise to the top at Sun Wah Group.

Then a 19-year-old student, he started at the bottom in 1976 trading the day's catch. 'That was how I was trained and prepared for management,' says Mr Choi, now the company president.

The  company was formed in 1957 by his father, group chairman Choi Kai-yau, as  Hong Kong's premier seafood wholesaler, processor and distributor. Expansion to  markets abroad gained the elder Mr Choi renown as 'Seafood King'.

'I got up early in the morning, about 4.30, since I had to be in the wholesale market in Kennedy Town at 5 o'clock,' Jonathan Choi said. 'There, I learned how to buy and sell seafood.'

Some days, he was sent out to the private boats at Aberdeen. 'I hopped from one fishing boat to another to quickly inspect their  catch of fish and shrimps, make an offer, buy the goods and get them shipped to the company's processing facility nearby,' he said.

'I  learned from my father to be very quick and sharp in making decisions because all the raw materials must arrive at the factory before 8 o'clock each morning.

'Seafood is perishable so we must have very good judgment and be practical. I had to do a complete cost analysis within an hour at the factory. There was no time to think about anything else.' He said that modus operandi  influenced all the decisions he and the group's other senior managers  had made over the last 30 years.

During his apprenticeship, he was tasked to look at some property investments in  the family's native Macau. He thought it was the right time to develop another commercial activity using ready cash from the seafood business as capital.

'In 1977, at age 20, I became the youngest bidder and the first to win a land auction in Macau,' he said. 'We remain one of the largest local developers in Macau.'

Sun Wah  has developed more than 30 industrial and commercial  blocks, hotels and shopping centres and  more than 7,000 residential units. With cash  made from the property business, Sun Wah has  diversified into financial services  by  lending to its property end-users.

Through subsidiary Sunford Finance, the group works in co-operation with some of Hong Kong's leading property agencies to provide home mortgages, personal loans and project loans to local homeowners and investors.

In 1982, when Mr Choi was appointed president, a steady  migration of Hong Kong residents to North America started because of fears  about the territory's scheduled handover  to  China in 1997.

Mr Choi thought that was the time for the group to expand aggressively overseas and keep staff who wanted to immigrate. These employees became the managing directors of new offices the group set up in their adopted cities. They helped the group eliminate the middlemen in these markets and sold directly to customers.

'In 10 years, we opened in nine locations in North America including New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Winnipeg and Toronto,' he said.

The wider coverage of its seafood trading business enabled  Sun Wah to broaden  its export customer base  to include  Japan, the mainland, Europe and Australia. That expansion was followed by investments in property - such as cold storages,  shopping malls and offices - for steady rental income.

It was quick decision-making that set in motion Sun Wah's  acquisition of financial services firm Kingsway in Canada.

'Hong Kong companies had been asking us to help finance their listed shares but we said we had no expertise in that area. So we took over Kingsway in 1995 and became involved as a share sponsor, underwriter and adviser,' Mr Choi said. 'We spun off the  firm in Hong Kong as SW Kingsway in 2000.'

Since then,  Sun Wah  has diversified further to become a conglomerate with varied holdings across the globe. It does business in six areas: seafood and foodstuff, property, financial services, infrastructure, technology and media.

Mr Choi said the group  had  in excess of US$1.2 billion in total assets and over 100 subsidiaries with more than 4,000 employees.

In October, the group moved to carve a bigger niche in  China's highly regulated media market through a joint venture with Tokyo-listed Kadokawa Holdings to set up 20 multi-cinema complexes  in the next three years  at an initial investment of about $100 million.

Mr Choi said the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement II had broadened some  specific commitments in Cepa I, including allowing Hong Kong  firms to  build wholly owned cinemas.

'These measures not only enhance channels for  screening  both local and overseas films but also create a new environment for  establishing more foreign partnerships,' he said.

Biography

Jonathan Choi Koon-shum is the 48-year-old president of the Hong Kong-based Sun Wah Group, a privately held conglomerate with total assets worth more than US$1.2 billion.

Mr Choi serves as chairman of wholly owned subsidiary Sun Wah Hi-Tech Group and of the main board-listed SW Kingsway Capital Holdings.

His father, Sun Wah Group founder and chairman Choi Kai-yau, started the business in 1957 in Macau, where he set up a small seafood trading enterprise that grew to become an international seafood wholesaler, processor and distributor.

The younger Mr Choi's appointment as president in 1982 put the group on a path to diversification and strategic growth. The business is focused on six areas - seafood and foodstuff, property, financial services, infrastructure, technology and media.

It counts more than  100 subsidiaries and more than 4,000 employees in Hong Kong, Macau, the mainland, Southeast Asia, Australia, Europe, Canada and the United States.

Outside  business, Mr Choi is a known philanthropist and patron of education.

He and his family have donated more than $200 million to various charitable projects.

For the past 10 years, his eponymous Choi Koon Shum Chinese Academy of Sciences Honorary Academician Foundation has provided monetary rewards each year to senior mainland scientists, aged 80 and older, for their contributions to science and technology development.



Following fresh fish feeds into snappy footwork