When Vincent Cheng Hoi-chuen got into a lift on his first day at Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp in 1978, a colleague politely asked him to get out - he was in the 'taipan' lift, for the chairman's exclusive use.
Little did he know then that he had taken the right lift, only 27 years too early. Cheng became the first Chinese taipan of the bank in 2005. Though the bank had dispensed with the chairman's lift by then, Cheng was the first local to move into 'Taipan House' at 19 Middle Gap Road, where he lived until last year.
Cheng, 63, now an executive director of HSBC Holdings, will call it a day on Thursday, after 33 years at the bank. As the city's most well known and respected local banker, he was a home-grown success story. As a boy, his family had to share housing with eight families, days which Cheng remembers as 'happy and fun' because 'it was like camping every day'.
The same positive approach helped him overcome a polio-induced disability at the age of six and drove him to fight for the rights of the underprivileged during university. While doing his master's at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, he was so poor that he could not afford a proper meal until he started washing dishes at a restaurant.
Returning to Hong Kong in 1978, he had two job offers right away - one, as a bond trader and the other, as an economist at HSBC. His girlfriend, now his wife, urged him to take the HSBC job for the low mortgage rate the bank staff then enjoyed.
'I loved working at the bank. When I first started, there were separate towels with each of the officers' names on them in the washroom. I felt so privileged!'