'Robin Hood' pits wits with mortgage gorilla

Start-up aiming to help negative-equity homeowners finds itself fighting a giant

He was the Robin Hood of the mortgage industry who rode to the aid of homeowners in negative equity in 2002. Leland Sun Li Xun's thinking was simple: if the big banks would not give trapped borrowers the same repayment terms as new home loan customers, then he could find other, smaller banks willing to oblige.

Born in Hong Kong, Mr Sun only lived here until he was four. His Shanghainese father's job as a chemical engineer with Dupont took the family to the United States in 1965. He didn't come back until 1993, working for Goldman Sachs. Not that he really considers himself to be from Hong Kong: 'You are from where you grew up, you're a creature of your environment.'

His career took him first to New York and later San Francisco for Goldman Sachs after graduating from UCLA. Mr Sun forsook the booming Silicon Valley for Hong Kong where he helped set up the Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation and in 1997 became its first chief executive. The HKMC was charged with buying residential home mortgages from commercial banks and other institutions.

In 2000, with former Goldman colleagues Moses Tsang and Danny Yee, he started Pan Asian Mortgage, becoming its first chief executive. 'My vision was to create something that focused on structured financing and securitisation.' It grew into an innovative financial services company.

'We felt we could leverage on the tremendous liquidity sloshing around in the markets and banking community in Asia,' he said.