His Door is Open

The CEO of corporate solutions specialist Tricor Hong Kong talks about his management style and working towards a more circular economy

Joe Wan sits in his fifth-floor office, where floor-to-ceiling windows look out to Victoria Harbour and, on a clear day, a distant Hong Kong skyline. The Kwun Tong waterfront boardwalk, where he was earlier being photographed between elderly leisure walkers and sweaty joggers, is almost visible too—a serene and impressive view befitting the CEO of business expansion and integrated services firm Tricor. While his company’s group management is situated ten storeys away, he chose an office on the same floor as the rest of his team.

“When I first took over, you needed to open four doors to get to my old office,” says Wan, who became CEO in January 2019. But during a major renovation, which will end with the installation of a coffee, drinks and snacks bar, he decided to democratise the company, opting for an approach more similar to a start-up than a business made from an amalgamation of three big accounting firms: Ernst & Young, PWC and Deloitte. He wanted to create an environment with “no hierarchies, no rules”, where his employees are free to “think big and move fast.”

Founded in 2000, Tricor has grown, in the last two decades, to become Asia’s leading corporate solutions specialist and provider of integrated business, corporate, investor, human resources and payroll, corporate trust and debt services. Headquartered in Hong Kong, it now operates out of 21 countries and territories, and serves 50,000 clients, including around 2,000 companies publicly listed in Asia and over 40 per cent of Fortune Global 500 companies. Under the current management’s leadership, the Tricor group has doubled in size since the premier acquisition and the last change of shareholders.