Eleven years ago, the South China Morning Post reported on a group of Hong Kong University students who won an international business competition held in the Netherlands, despite their being the youngest team and the first Asian team to take part.
One student, Losa Mak Ka-yee, told the reporter that the students' belief in themselves had been their key to success.
Today Ms Mak is manager of HSBC's Thai Equity Fund, a position that has no doubt tested her self-belief in recent times.
The past two years have been tough for Thailand. A series of bad news - drought, bird flu, the tsunami, bombs and civil unrest in the southern provinces, oil price shocks and more recently political turmoil - has delivered the economy several hard knocks.
Ms Mak has ridden the storm well, consistently beating the SET index and delivering an average 27 per cent annual compound growth since taking the helm in 2001, against the SET's 13 per cent. On the back of this performance, the fund has attracted substantial new investment, growing from US$27 million to more than US$280 million today.
It is no surprise that Ms Mak is upbeat on the fund's prospects, but she presents a convincing case. Bad news, after all, often signals a buying opportunity for the aggressive investors the fund targets.
While conceding that the short-term horizon is clouded by political uncertainty, she sees the promise of a more attractive future, citing Thailand as an attractive potential turnaround play for those bullish on Asia and yet wishing to diversify beyond China.