"The terminals, he says, are like his children. "Every child is delivered on time, brought up well and has brains.""
Sadly, the same cannot be said of his own real child Karl.
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It Changed My Life
It Changed My Life: I always hire people who are better than me, says Changi Airport Group chairman Liew Mun Leong
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Mr Liew Mun Leong at his office in Changi Airport. In the background is a portrait of Singapore's founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, painted by French artist Jean-Pierre Blanchard.ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM
PUBLISHED
FEB 3, 2019, 5:00 AM SGT
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Without good staff, Changi Airport Group chairman says he wouldn't have come so far
Wong Kim Hoh
Deputy Life Editor
In 2007, Mr Liew Mun Leong - then chief executive of CapitaLand - received a staggering $20.52 million bonus for helping the property developer achieve a record profit of $2.76 billion that year.
He is a wealthy man, but wealth, he says, means nothing to him.
"I've settled my life, my children's lives and I've also looked at the future and there's nothing I need that I cannot afford," says the 72-year-old who has three children and seven grandchildren.
Now the chairman of the Changi Airport Group (CAG), he says he is contented with his home (a landed property in Chancery Lane) and his car (a BMW 7 series). He no longer buys expensive timepieces and now wears an Apple watch.
In fact, his private banker has told him he can live comfortably from the interest on his wealth.
"But I don't want to work on my money. I want to work on my grey matter and if possible, grow it," he says with a chuckle.
It explains why he still holds not one, but several jobs. Besides CAG, which spearheads airport development, he is chairman of Surbana Jurong, a consultancy in urban and infrastructure development.
He sits on several boards and is also provost's chair and professor (practice) on pro bono service at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School, Faculty of Engineering and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
"Since stepping down from CapitaLand in 2013, I've been even busier. But I enjoy it," he says. "When you're dying on your bed, you'll ask yourself: 'Are you satisfied, is it worth it, have you done enough, have you lived a full life?'
"I have a full life, but I still want to continue," he declares.
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- Sunday Em @ ils From A Chairman, published by Straits Times Press, is priced at $29.90 and available at all major bookstores. Royalties from the sale of the book will be donated to Temasek Foundation Nurtures to support programmes on education and professional development.
One of the rare few to have made a mark in both spheres, Mr Liew spent 22 years in government service and has clocked 26 years in the private sector.
The fifth of six children, his beginnings were humble.
His father was a fitter, and his mother, a housewife. "Two of my older brothers died from food poisoning during the war," he says.
His parents changed his middle name from Kok to Mun so that the Grim Reaper would not come for him. "To break the curse, I also had to address my father as 'Ah Sook' and my mother as 'Ah Dai'," he says, using the Cantonese words for "uncle" and "elder".
His home, growing up, was a pre-war terraced house in Jalan Besar shared with five other families.
"Each family had only one room and there were seven of us: my parents, my three siblings and me, and an adoptive uncle."
Mr Liew slept in a collapsible canvas bed under a dim light in the corridor. "It was quite comfortable, but it had bed bugs. Every Sunday, I had to pour boiling water on the bed joints to kill them," he says.
Because of his success in the corporate world, people often assume, much to his irritation, that he attended well-known schools like Anglo-Chinese or Raffles Institution.
"I didn't. I went to gangster-infested schools," says the former student of May North Primary and Queenstown Technical Secondary.
In 1959, he had to retake his Primary School Leaving Examination because of an exam leak. He failed.
That earned him a major thrashing from his mother, who made him kneel under the table next to the altar of Tua Pek Gong, a deity worshipped in many Taoist households.
The punishment was harsh because the failure meant Mr Liew could not continue his education in a secondary school.
Nobody knew what to do until a fellow classmate - who also failed the exam - suggested that they go back to May North and ask to be re-admitted.
"So we repeated our Primary 6. I was top boy that year; he was second. The incident made me develop a fear of failure. I never failed again in school after that."
His decision to study engineering - he was from the then University of Singapore's first batch of civil engineering graduates - was influenced by his father, who worked under an engineer he idolised.
"He said: 'If you can't become an engineer, at least get a job under a fan'," he says, explaining that his father wanted him to have a white-collar job.
He was the first among his classmates to land a job at the National Iron and Steel Mills when he graduated in 1970. But barely half a year later, he was called up for national service. It changed his life.
He was recruited into Mindef, where he met the likes of the late Dr Goh Keng Swee, former deputy prime minister and one of Singapore's founding fathers.
Mindef's first civil engineer, he was tasked with developing and building military camps and infrastructure. It was a big job, one which awakened his latent leadership instincts.
From Dr Goh and a few other mentors, he learnt the art of "disregarding the rules and getting things done". "We were trained to make decisions by being empowered. We could call the shots, as long as we were not corrupt and did not do things for our own interest."
He took this philosophy with him when he went to the Public Works Department (PWD) in the mid-1970s, where he was involved in the building of Changi Airport Terminals 1 and 2 from day one.
"I don't circumvent rules; I break ground," he says proudly as he starts telling stories of how he beat bureaucracy to get things done.
When his requests for an electric typewriter and a vehicle to transport his staff to lunch (Changi then was remote and undeveloped) were not approved, he listed their provision as requirements for contractors bidding for tenders.
"We were paying for the contracts and the typewriter and vehicle were not owned by us. The contractors owned them and took them back when they were done," he says with a grin.
In many ways, he says his career has been a case of opportunity and chance. "How many engineers get the opportunity to build airports? They get to build schools, hospitals and shopping malls. But airports?"
After more than two decades in the public sector, including a stint at the Singapore Institute of Standards and Industrial Research, he took up the offer to steer engineering and construction firm L&M Investments.
He shook things up, doubled its share price and then left to become president of Pidemco Land in 1996. Four years later, when CapitaLand was born from a merger between Pidemco Land and DBS Land, he became its head honcho.
Those were turbulent times.
"CapitaLand went through a whole series of crises: the burst of the dot.com bubble, 9/11, the Bali bombings, Sars... For five or six years, it was one crisis after another," he says.
"It was tense and frightening. During one meeting with my people, I nearly cried. I said: 'It can't be that our share price has gone below $1. You're all clever people. What's happening?'
"It was a rallying call and we had to pull together and fight. I'm proud of the fact that none of us had real estate in our blood. We were engineers and economists, but we were good thinkers and operators," says Mr Liew.
The company more than pulled through.
For several years after that, net profit for CapitaLand - the first to introduce real estate investment trusts (Reits) to the local market in 2001 - was more than $1 billion.
Working with good people is something he emphasises repeatedly. "My philosophy has always been to hire whoever is better than me. If not, I wouldn't have come so far," he says, adding that he personally picks every member of his management bench.
Good staff and support from shareholders allow him to exercise what is crucial: courageous leadership. He made several bold moves. In 2010, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, CapitaLand bought seven properties in China for $2.2 billion from Orient Overseas International, controlled by the family of former Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa.
CapitaLand started with a group market cap of $8.9 billion.
"When I stepped down in 2013, it was $44.5 billion," he says. "It means we created $35 billion over 12 years."
Mr Liew also believes in rewarding good staff and stretching a hand to help them if they need it.
"You must ask this question: Why should people follow you? Do you have a future?"
Once, he asked his accountant to do a headcount of the number of staff who had become millionaires on paper because of CapitaLand's share price and options. "Six hundred; I'm very proud of that," he says.
However, over his 12 years at CapitaLand, he has also fired seven chief executives. "I handled them personally, I didn't leave it to my HR. I told them they might have a better future elsewhere. If you are frank and have no malice, I believe nobody will hold a grudge against you."
Leadership and talent development are topics he addresses often in lengthy e-mails he writes on Sundays to staff, a practice he started 20 years ago.
The Straits Times Press recently compiled and published Sunday Em @ ils From A Chairman, comprising nearly 30 of these messages written between 2016 and 2018. The book is the fifth of his Sunday Em @ ils series.
The topics run the gamut from Changi Airport to hawker food to China's Belt and Road Initiative.
Mr Liew, who once harboured journalistic ambitions, says: "With one press of the button, I can send my thoughts and reflections to my staff. Because it's in writing, I can express myself clearly."
He averages about 20 e-mails a year, each of which can take up to five hours to write.
"While some of my staff say thank you, I'm sure not all read them because they can be quite long-winded," says the corporate leader who delivers lectures - pro bono - to entrepreneurs, engineers and other professionals at NUS.
He has also heard at least one staff member in Australia finding it a waste of time.
"But it doesn't stop me. I do it on Sundays and am not using office time. I'm actually amazed I've done it for so long. If my e-mails were a son, he'd be doing his national service now," adds Mr Liew, who is now working on a book about his experience in the private and public sectors.
His proudest achievement remains Changi Airport, which handles more than 65 million passengers annually and has won more than 500 awards.
He built its first runway in 1975, and now, he's beavering away over T5, which is bigger than T1, T2 and T3 combined, and is slated to open around 2030. The terminals, he says, are like his children.
"Every child is delivered on time, brought up well and has brains."
