The Richest Entrepreneurs in Malaysia and Southeast Asia

Tan Sri Robert Kuok is one of the richest entrepreneurs in Malaysia and Southeast Asia with estimated $12.2 billion on July 2017 as reported by Forbes. Robert Kuok nickname also call as “The Sugar King of Asia” as working in sugar business.

Kuok started work as an office boy, and later became the clerk of a rice trading department in Singapore. During the trading skills he learned from his early days led him to be a successful businessman. Kuok’s father arrived in Malaya from Fujian, China and Robert was the youngest brothers who born in Johor Baharu on 6 October 1923. Kuok fluent well in English, Chinese Fuzhou dialect that learn from his parents and also Japanese during Japan’s wartime occupation of Malaya.

 In 1942 and 1945, Kuok was graduation in Singapore and he worked in department of Japanese industrial conglomerate Mitsubishi Shoji Khaisha. He took the skills and learned from Japanese back to Johor do the family’s business after the war. In 1949, Kuok and his two brothers and a cousin Kuok Hock Chin founded kuok brothers Sdn Bhdin trading agricultural commodities after Kuok senior died in 1948. Kuok buying cheap sugar from India before the prices shot up by a coup in 1961. Kuok invest heavily in sugar refineries by controlled 80% of Malaysian sugar market with production of 1.5 million tonnes. He also equivalent to 10% of world production.

In 1971, Kuok built the first Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore until 1977, his first forey into Hong Kong property. He built the second hotel when he acquired a plot of land on the newly reclaimed Tsim Sha Tsui East waterfront known as the Kowloon Shangri-La. Kuok Kerry Group acquired a 34.9% from Murdoch’s News Corporation of stake in the South China Morning Post. His businesses in China include 10 bottling companies for Coca-Cola and ownership of the Beijing World Trade Centre. Besides that, Kuok’s companies have investments in many countries which including Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Fiji. PBB Group under the flagship of Robert Kuok issued a statement of the Bursa Malaysia in 31 October 2009. From that time, Kuok decided to dispose its sugar units along with land used to cultivate sugar cane to FELDA as much as RM 1.29 billion. The sugar unit and sugar cane plantation were the second largest business segment upon its grain and feed which were topping the sales meanwhile, the sales resulted in a one-off gain for the company. Finally, Kuok’s Singapore-based oil serviced company PACC Offshore Services Holding (POSH) started pre-IPO with investors to list on the Singapore Stock Exchange to raise RM 4 thousand billion in February 2014.