'The Vietnamese
PEOPLE EXPECT US
TO CONTRIBUTE...'
16
talking heads
WHAT's NfwS Issue 3 March 1998
In Southeast Asia there is one Rabobank International office
which is only working normal 12-hour days. Our people in
Ho Chi Minh City serving the very new emerging Vietnamese
economy have perhaps never been the envy of colleagues in
high-performing, turbulent countries around the region. But
as Lai Chong Tuck and his small team get on with the day-to-
day business of building confidence and trust, the calmer
waters of the Vietnamese environment also present their
own specific challenges and demand measured responses.
Singaporean Lai Chong Tuck
began the cautious process of
building business in Vietnam
some six years before
relocating to the capital, Ho
Chi Minh City, two years ago.
'Because I'd been in and out of
Vietnam for some years,
setting up there was not
exactly a culture shock. It's
true I come from a very
modern, very aggressive
business environment in
Singapore, but we actually
built that progress during my
life time. If I look around me
in Vietnam, then I see
conditions similar to those in
Singapore when I was a boy.'
Lai Chong Tuck's ready sense
of humour is never far away,
even when the subject is
serious. He is first generation
Singaporean, born in the
1950s to Cantonese parents
who had moved to the then
British colony in search of
opportunities. 'My father was
an engineer on freight vessels,
so Singapore, which was a
great port for the region even
then, was clearly an attractive
option for my parents.' What
they didn't know was that war
would hit Singapore hard just
after they arrived. 'They
certainly weren't counting on
the Japanese arrival shortly
after they did,' he laughs. But
the Lai family of seven
children survived and did
extremely well. 'My eldest
brother won a scholarship to
study in England and once he
returned, things were quite
easy for us.'
Easy to Lai Chong Tuck
appears to mean that working
as a laborer in your school
holidays is a character-building
exercise. 'There is a Chinese
saying which states that in a
rich family, it is better to be the
eldest son; in a poor family it
is best to be the youngest. I
was the youngest in our
family.' His laugh is infectious,
but it is still hard to equate the
obviously successful, well-
tailored banker with a 15-year
old teenager doing manual
work to help out the family
budget. 'If you've always had
to work hard, you never take
anything for granted," he says.
'If I look back on my boyhood
in Singapore, I see that there
was a lot of poverty and
hardship, but people had hope,
they were optimistic and
ambitious, especially for their
children. So much has changed
in my life time. For example,
when I was a boy, there was
not enough to go around so,
educating girls was not a
priority - young Singaporeans
today would find that notion
strange, incomprehensible.
Even at this time of economie
set-back, Singapore is still a
thriving, modern economy
with life style to match.'
It is perhaps this personal
development that enables him
to move with apparent ease
from highly sophisticated, fast-
moving and turbulent
environments, like Thailand
where he initiated RI activities
in the mid-1980s, to the
relatively slow pace of Vietnam.
'1 learnt very early in life that
the so-called first principle is a
very useful guideline,' he says. 'I
try wherever possihle to apply
that approach of stripping
things down to their essentials,
rather than embellishing and
clouding issues with
superfluities. When you work 4
in a financially unsophisticated"
market like Vietnam, you are
obliged to go back to bare
essentials. That suits me, that
suits the teacher - some would
say pendant - in me.'
At present, Lai and his team
are involved primarily with
large financial institutions,
international corporates and
trading companies with
interests in the country, and
with APFT projects. 'We are
very much in the process of
building a customer base,' he
confirms. 'It is a very careful
approach and we're trying to
identify companies that could
become customers in the
future, once there is a little
more regulation. Financial
disclosure and other practices
are not yet as well advanced as
in other countries. This means
companies often lack some of
the transparency that an
organization like RI insists on.'
For Lai, working in a relatively
unsophisticated financial
environment means 'you have
to leave a whole lot of
assumptions behind you. You
have to make sure you never
appear patronizing.
Lai's own training has
equipped him well for the kind
of climate currently prevalent
in Vietnam. Following a degre^
in social sciences and
economics at the University of
Singapore and a graduate
diploma in financial
management, he became a
trainee at the United Overseas
Bank. 'What I liked about that
training program was the mix
of international and domestic
focus. Two years of corporate
and later investment banking
experience, preceded his move
to the Belgian Generale Bank.
There he did international
credit. 'Rabobank attracted me
because I wanted to get back
into the corporate side, I
wanted the challenge of setting
up new business.' Thailand
gave him that opportunity f
first. Now Vietnam continues
to challenge his ability to
position RI in this very
different market.
Lai Chong Tuck building business in Vietnam
