The Man Who Would Be King

When Myanmar’s repressive dictatorship caused his family to flee to China in the 1960s, Serge Pun could never have foreseen that he would become one of the richest and most respected businessmen and real estate developers in his home country.

- Liam Aran Barnes

He's the man who developed Myanmar’s first gated community and is the founder of one of the nation’s largest private banks. He launched the iconic balloons that soar over Bagan, the country’s most famous tourist draw, and is the driving force behind its premier golf course. He’s also had a hand in the laundry business.

But for Myanmar’s Mr Clean, success hasn't always been par for the course.

After enjoying a comfortable middle-class upbringing in post-colonial Rangoon (now Yangon), Serge Pun and his family, as with many other middle-class Burmese at the time, found themselves on the wrong end of strongman leader Ne Win’s increasingly authoritarian regime and in 1965 fled for his father’s native China. From the frying pan into the fire, the timing was devastating.

Only nine months into his studies in Beijing, Mao Zedong launched his Cultural Revolution. All schools were closed and Pun, separated from his family, joined the Red Guard. Marooned in China, he spent most of his teenage years working the fields in rural Yunnan.

“Once the Cultural Revolution started, China’s doors were sealed,” Pun says. “But in 1973, there was a brief period when windows were opened and they allowed people who had come to China in the mid60s prior to the Revolution to apply to leave, so we did.”

Pun’s hastily planned exit strategy found him penniless in Hong Kong only months later. Within less than a year, his fortunes improved and he found work with a German businessman at a property consultancy firm, which catered to Asian investors eyeing real estate in the West.

“In 1983, after working with the firm for a decade I decided to set up my own company”, Pun says. “Serge Pun & Associates (SPA) was born and the rest as they say is history.”