NOTHING impresses like a title. In Hong Kong a knighthood or peerage may top the list but connections to an obscure, decaying, or just plain defunct royal family is no bad thing for the ambitious networker.
Thus can 'His Excellency' Khundkar Khalid Ahmed Hossain feel hard done by since his arrival as a director of the locally listed stock MKI. He is now the chairman.
First, aspersions were cast on the company's China and Mongolia deals, and then the Securities and Futures Commission suspended the stock pending an investigation.
Hardly the sort of treatment a chap going by the title 'His Excellency' would expect. Intrigued at this maltreatment, we asked Mr Hossain to explain the title's origin.
He told us that it was a 'composite recognition from governments around the world' for his 'contribution to economic development'.
No government, royal authority - or anyone, for that matter - had ever bestowed the title, he admitted. Somewhat scathing of Insider's obtuseness, he said: 'Of course, no one actually grants you a title like this.' But it seems we are not the first to be confused by Mr Hossain's royal status.
Before his arrival in Hong Kong - offering MKI investors inter alia the first Ulan Bator supercomputer centre - we are told he was in Kuala Lumpur trying to sell a Mongolian hotel and casino to one of Malaysia's largest listed conglomerates.
