S.P. Tao
01 January 2017
There was insufficient focus last week on the visit here of Mr.
S.P. Tao, the Singapore property tycoon, for the symbolic ground
breaking of the USD 166 million Havelock City Commercial Development.
Despite being already past 100 years in age, Tao made the special
effort to come here for the launch of an iconic 46-storeyed project
that will comprise 600,000 square feet of top quality office space and a
200,000 square foot shopping mall which, as he said, "will visually
anchor" the Havelock City residencies where 450 apartments have been
completed and are already in occupation and work is going apace on the
balance 650 units.
Tao is a businessman who has gone public
about his great affection for this country which he first visited in
1941 when his then employer gave him a week’s rest and recreation
vacation. He chose to spend his holiday at the Mount Lavinia Hotel,
coming here from Rangoon where he was working at the time. He is on
record saying that "I was so impressed by the gentle and friendly
people and the natural beauty of your country. Subsequent to that, I
took many holiday trips to my unforgettable Ceylon." His business links
with this country began in the late fifties when he was in the
commodities and shipping business with a lot of dealings with the Food
Department. He sold the Ceylon Shipping Corporation its first ship, the
SS Lanka Rani in exchange for a 20 percent stake of Colombo Dockyards.
It
was in 1990, when he was in Colombo on Dockyard business, that he was
persuaded by his friends here (he had many of them) who knew he was
active in the property business to take a look at the Echelon Square
site on which the World Trade Center (WTC), often presented as the
country’s best address, now stands. He walked the site and was
impressed by it. He said about three years ago when he was here to join
in the celebration of the WTC’s 15th anniversary that the
possibilities of the site that piqued his interest was more than that
of a possible commercial development in an emerging market. He said in
his speech at the anniversary event in October 2012 that he went back to
Singapore and through his close friends (Mr. Baku Mahadeva was one of
them), told the concerned authorities that he intended investing in an
unprecedented development on the site "even though it may be 10 years
ahead of the market." This was at a time when the northern insurgency
was raging and there was little prospect of an early end to the war.
Tao’s decision to invest here certainly gave a much needed boost to the
business confidence in the country. He was by then a big name in the
regional property industry having developed two World Trade Centers in
his native Nanjing in China and in Jakarta in Indonesia.
Tao
believed that in building the Colombo WTC there were three major
givens to achieving his vision – the most appropriate design concept,
one of the world’s leading construction companies and as he stressed NO
bank borrowings. "Otherwise I might not have achieved my idealistic
goal," he said. Admittedly Overseas Realty, the public listed company
controlled by Tao’s Shin Kwang Group, which built and operates the WTC
had numerous setbacks during the construction and had to face other
challenges such as the LTTE attack on the neighboring Central Bank soon
after then President Chandrika Kumaratunga had opened the building in
1997. But conditions improved in subsequent years and Tao’s group was
encouraged to make its second major investment here in Havelock City in
partnership with the Bank of Ceylon which owned the extensive 18-acre
site on which the development is proceeding apace. It was for the
launching of the latest phase in this project that Tao was here last
week in the country which he says is closest to his heart after China,
his birthplace.
S.P. Tao has made a remarkable journey in
his long life with his career beginning after stowing away in a Jardine
Matheson ship bound for Indo-China armed with a Confucian upbringing, a
Jesuit education and the proverbial five silver coins given him by his
father. Some 50 years later, after a successful career in commodity
trading in Burma and shipping in Hong Kong and Thailand taking on the
Conference Lines, he switched his focus to brick and mortar in
Singapore teaming with Jardine Matheson to build Singapore Land and
later Jakarta Land. It is Sri Lanka’s great good fortune that this
country was a stopping place in Tao’s memorable journey, and even at
his age he chose to come here last week to be present at the launch of
the next phase of what he is doing here. That he chose to confront the
infirmities of his great age and come here was clearly an index of his
affection for the country.
Tao said last week that he is a
fervent believer that the property market is the biggest enterprise in
any leading city in the world and its development tracks a country’s
social and economic success. It is certainly the lead industry here
although questions abound of whether there will be takers for all the
massive constructions proceeding apace particularly in greater Colombo.
Meeting their infrastructure demands would also be a major challenge.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the various developers be they China
Harbor with the Colombo Port City, John Keells Holding with its mega
Cinnamon Life project, or the plethora of other lesser ventures are
confident enough to invest hugely in large developments. Overseas
Realty has made a cash call on its shareholders to raise funds for its
ongoing development. Given current conditions on the Colombo stock
market, there is little incentive for shareholders to pay the twenty
rupee price per share new share given that it is trading at this level
on the secondary market. But Shin Kwang which is the dominant
shareholder will take up its rights and mop up anything that will not
be subscribed, analysts believe. That is surely an index of Tao’s
confidence of the future of this country.
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