Teh
Hong Piow Teh was born on March 14, 1930 in Singapore. He is the eldest son of a migrant family from Guangdong, China. His father worked as a cook for free board and lodging and tried his hands on everything to make ends meet for his family – trader of clocks, watches, spectacles, fruits and vegetables. When Teh’s mother died when he was six, Teh was left to take care of his younger siblings while his father worked. On top of this, he also had to help his father in their small business. Teh grew up knowing what it was like to be poor. He worked while finishing his secondary schooling at the Anglo-Chinese School in Singapore. He dabbled in tin mining, tourism, textiles and garments, and property development. These early years of hardships taught him the virtue of hardwork. After finishing high school, Teh went to Malaya where he was hired as a bank clerk at the Oversea Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) in 1950. He did not mind the meager salary he was getting because he has already set his sights on learning the banking trade. In five years, he was promoted as a bank officer. In 1960, he left OCBC and joined the management team which helped start Malayan Banking. In 1964, he became its General Manager. Armed with 16 years of experience and knowledge on the ins and outs the banking industry, Teh decided to go solo and put up his own bank, the Public Bank. Prior to this, he ventured into property development. This also proved successful because he made RM 10 million which he used as seed money in putting up his Public Bank. Public Bank lives up to its name as it catered to the most ordinary people in Malaysia or the so-called man-on-the-street by lending capital to small and medium entrepreneurs. Despite his successful foray into property development, Teh no longer pursued this after putting up his bank. “I came into the realization that it was not wise to go into different types of business enterprises just for the sake of diversification. I believe that in order to do well, one should concentrate on the business which one knows best,” says Teh. Teh, who originally wanted to become a lawyer, focused on improving and making his bank bigger. It now has 241 branches in Malaysia, 66 in Hong Kong in China, and 9 in Cambodia. In 1990, he acquired the Hong Kong-based Public finance Ltd (formerly JCG Finance Co Ltd) and Public Bank (Hong Kong) Ltd (formerly Asia Commercial Bank) in 2006. His efforts continue to pay-off as Public Bank is often judged as the best bank in Malaysia by national and international business publications. Also, Teh’s outstanding contributions in the field of banking and finance has been widely recognized. He is the first winner of Euromoney’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Asia in 2006. In 2007, in celebration of Public Bank’s 40th anniversary, Teh, who loves soccer and photography, released his book “Teh Hong Piow – A Banking Thoroughbred. The book tells how Public Bank is the cornerstone of Teh’s life: Public Bank is him and he is Public Bank. Sources: Ang, Elaine. Public Bank’s Teh beats all the
odds. Posted on October 18, 2007. Retrived on August 19, 2009 from
http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/10/18/business/19198449&sec=business Photo credits: http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/10/18/business/19198449&sec=business  |
Surely Teh Hong Piow could have thought of a more unique and distinctive
name for the bank he established 43 years ago. However, driven by
a vision to build a bank for the public and win the confidence of
the public, he decided to simply call it the Public Bank (http://ww2.publicbank.com.my/)
Today, Teh is happy that Public Bank, Malaysia’s largest and
strongest domestic bank, is realizing that vision.