If I'd owned shares in the pubs in which I drank away my student days, I would never have needed to work.
Or maybe only part-time. My accountancy inadequacies aside, the concept of having shareholders own the company that owns the club where they are members is a brilliant one and last year won Alistair Paton, the founder of club M1NT in London, the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
His shareholders happen to be stinking rich. The London private club opened two years ago and members include royalty and billionaires.
Then M1NT opened in Hong Kong late last year, with mega-expensive paintings and shark tanks on the walls, and in just six months, the Hollywood Road club has been able to pay out dividends of HK$2 million to its 250 shareholders who are also its members.
That's actually only HK$8,000 per member, and those members are so well-heeled they'll probably not notice, but it does show the success of the M1NT concept.
'Within six months the revenue has exceeded annual projections and the trend is set to continue, with the company already having increased booking levels well into 2008,' said the club's executive director, Andrew Lewis.