Property was always on his mind

The late Ng Teng Fong, billed as Singapore’s richest man by Forbes Asia magazine last September, rose from humble beginnings.

He was just six years old when his family migrated to Singapore from Putian, a village in China’s Fujian province. His father set up a soya sauce factory and had a grocery shop in the Jalan Besar area stocking dried goods, preserved and specialty foods from their village.

Mr Ng was inducted at a young age to help out in the family business and did not acquire much formal education in Singapore, according to a short biography of the property tycoon released yesterday by his Singapore-based Far East Organization.

As the eldest of 11 children in the family, expectations were high that Mr Ng should carry on the family business. But he disappointed his father when he decided to strike out on his own in the 1950s, when he was in his 20s.

Mr Ng’s first property project back in 1962 was a 72-unit terrace housing development at Jalan Pachelli in the Serangoon Gardens area. In 1969, he developed Watten Estate in the Bukit Timah area. In the 1970s, Mr Ng developed Far East Shopping Centre and Lucky Plaza along Orchard Road, followed by Far East Plaza on Scotts Road in the early 1980s. Since then, the group has developed Orchard Parksuites serviced residences and Orchard Central.

Mr Ng’s Far East Organization group is the biggest private property developer in Singapore today. It comprises over 180 private companies and two listed entities – Orchard Parade Holdings and Yeo Hiap Seng.

In the 1970s, Mr Ng entered the Hong Kong property market. Today, the business there is under the Sino Group, which includes public-listed Tsim Sha Tsui Properties, Sino Land and Sino Hotels. Mr Ng was the only Singaporean businessman invited to the historic signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration by Margaret Thatcher and Zhao Ziyang in December 1984.

Mr Ng’s property empire today comprises not only property trading (such as developing apartments for sale) but a sizeable property investment business (comprising completed properties held for recurring rental income).

For instance, Far East is the largest owner-operator of serviced residences and corporate housing in Singapore with 2,400 apartments in its inventory. Far East and Sino have a dozen hotels here and in Hong Kong with over 4,700 rooms. The flagship is The Fullerton Hotel Singapore.

Those who knew Mr Ng recall his industrious streak. ‘He was a man who worked extremely hard – day and night,’ says Hong Leong Group executive chairman Kwek Leng Beng.

Back in the 1980s when the two men were active in the Real Estate Developers Association of Singapore (Redas), ‘we used to study the property market together at his office . . . more often than not, we would find that we were still deep in discussion long after the official Redas meetings were over and everyone else had left’, Mr Kwek said.

CB Richard Ellis chairman (Asia) Willy Shee said: ‘Mr Ng didn’t speak much English but was very sharp and his mind was on property all the time. Even at functions, he did not engage much in social talk but always wanted to know more about the property market and trends. There was never an idle moment for him.’

Another veteran property consultant, Knight Frank chairman Tan Tiong Cheng, reminisces about his first meeting with Mr Ng around 1981. ‘He was carrying a worn-out black book in which he was copying notes, doing his calculations,’ Mr Tan said.

‘He was always focused on property. Even when he bought into Yeo Hiap Seng, he had in mind the land bank it offered rather than just the food and beverage business,’ he added.

Source: Business Times, 3 Feb 2010