No Regrets

In his youth, Bernard Chan endured a life threatening health condition that required extended stays in hospital. The result is a determination to live his life meaningfully.

- Stuart Heaver

When Bernard Charnwut Chan sold Asia Commercial Bank in 2006 for a reported HK$4.5 billion, it was the second largest financial services takeover in the history of Hong Kong. Despite the shrewdly timed exit, Chan still regards himself as a banker who is following proudly in the footsteps of his illustrious grandfather, Chin Sophonpanich, the founder of Bangkok bank – one of Asia's biggest regional banks.

Chin represented the classic Chinese rags-to riches saga, arriving in Thailand as a labourer from Chaozhou city and building an international business empire brick by brick, by addressing the financial needs of the growing Chinese diaspora in Thailand.

"Growing up in Hong Kong I was very much aware of my grandfather’s legacy and how he built the Bangkok Bank," says Chan, whose family still dominate banking and financial services in Thailand.

An impressive bronze bust of the family patriarch, who died in 1988, overlooks the opulently appointed offices of Asia Financial Services, which occupies the 16th floor of Worldwide House in Central Hong Kong. Chan moved his offices to this building (which he purchased “for about HK$20 million, I think”) in 2006, after the sale of the bank, and he casually remarks that the floor above this one recently sold for HK$509 million.

“It is typical Hong Kong. Even if your core businesses are struggling a little, if you bought property years ago, [they] will still make loads of money,” he says in passing.

The Wall Street Journal once wrote of his family and their influence in Asian financial affairs. “For two generations, one family has towered over Thailand's economy. Few who invest in the country can sidestep the banking, insurance and securities network controlled by the Sophonpanich clan," intoned the newspaper in 1998 – and not much has changed since.