INTHEBLACK April 2022 - Magazine - Page 34
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// L E A D E R S & I N N O VAT O R S
“However, we knew the pace of doing
various things would become very different,
and there would be a lot of change within
certain businesses,” he says.
Ho offers the example of Gleneagles
Hospital, a private Hong Kong healthcare
institution in which NWS holds 40 per cent
equity interests. The hospital has been directly
and massively disrupted by the COVID-19
health crisis.
“During the pandemic, people hesitated to
go to any hospital,” he says.
“This was understandable, so we quickly
collaborated with a telecom operator to set up
online subscriptions that allowed people to see
doctors without coming to the hospital. We’d
been thinking about this service for a while,
but because of the pandemic we had to speed
it up.”
THE GRAND PLAN: OPTIMISATION
Look back a few decades, says Ho, and you
see a time in business when the idea of a
conglomerate was a popular one.
Times have changed, however, and many
businesses have moved towards a strategy
34 ITB April 2022
of specialisation, focusing on one industry
or sector.
The NWS team took a different tack with
its approach to diversification. Less than two
years before the COVID-19 outbreak, the
leadership team decided to focus on four core
businesses. They would hold on to several
more, while non-core assets would be sold
off to optimise the portfolio.
“We sold a number of our businesses. Even
during the pandemic, we found the right
windows to sell with good valuations. This
allowed us to focus on a few core businesses.
That focus helped us ride out the pandemic.”
When Ho first came on board in early
2018, NWS managed 15 businesses. It now
counts just four core businesses, plus another
five in its portfolio.
The core businesses are commercial
aircraft leasing firm Goshawk, building
and infrastructure company Hip Hing
Construction, life insurance business FTLife,
and a roads portfolio consisting of 15 roads
in the six Mainland China locations of
Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shanxi, Hubei, Hunan
and Tianjin.
The breadth of the portfolio has created
great resilience against the worst of the
“AFTER UNIVERSITY, I WAS A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER. I
BASICALLY TOOK WHATEVER OPPORTUNITIES I COULD GET AT
THE TIME, BUT I FOCUSED MYSELF FROM THE BEGINNING ON
CORPORATE FINANCE AND CORPORATE LAW. MY ACCOUNTING
AND FINANCE BACKGROUND HELPED A LOT.”
GILBERT HO FCPA