Star of Bukit Bintang

The Edge, 6 August 2001

Tan Sri Francis Yeoh transformed drab to fab in just six months, handing Kuala Lumpur its swankiest street on a gilt-edged platter. He tells Anita Gabriel and Cheryl Ambrose of the The Edge how he did it. ''Oh, this is nice,'' says Tan Sri Francis Yeoh, stepping to the rhythm of the pulsating music. Stylish in a black collarless Dockers T-shirt, matching khakis and a casual jacket, the architect of Bintang Walk in Kuala Lumpur sambas to the Latin music in the background. Despite the stifling air and the haze shrouding the stars in the sky, the 250m stretch of Bintang Walk, streaked with warm yellow light, bustles with activity. Gleaming high-rise buildings, borders lined with warm terracotta tiles and cool granite and flanked by lush palms and leafy jungle trees, lend a fresh perspective to one of the oldest parts of the city. Yeoh is in high spirits, enjoying his stroll and savouring the scenic pleasures of his creation. We wouldn’t have been surprised had he flung his arms out and proclaimed, “This is all mine!” to the myriad passers-by.

Yeoh is in a relaxed mood for good reason. We meet just hours before he takes a three-week vacation from his business suit.

“I want a very, very chilled bottle of white wine,” he tells the man running Cesar’s Bistro, the Italian eatery defined by the cobalt blue umbrella-like canvas contraption in the heart of Bintang Walk.

He stretches his long legs and lounges in his seat, his features dwarfed by his wide smile. He is, after all, at his favourite haunt in Bintang Walk.

“It’s like an aquarium,” he says of Cesar’s. “I can watch people without being observed. And I also like the pasta here. It’s comparable to pasta in London and New York City, but at Third World prices.”

One might wonder what a man who’s made it to Forbes’ list of the world’s richest men cares about Third World prices, but Yeoh epitomises the entrepreneurial spirit. And for that reason, he knows what sells – quality and affordability, two main features that characterize all his development projects.

Most may not be able to remember the shoddy state of the Bukit Bintang area before YTL Corp moved in and shaped it up just two years ago. There weren’t any fat-leafed jungle plants and palms lining the well-lit walkways and no restaurants serving huge portions of pizza. There wasn’t a sushi bar in which to take refuge from the heat and certainly, no designer stores where shoppers could max out their credit cards.

Considering the energy it must have taken to bring Bintang Walk to fruition, it sounds implausible that it took just six months but that was all the time that was needed to lay interlocking bricks along the pavement, plant trees and raise large canvases for shelter.

“Because we (YTL Corp) own the Marriott, Star Hill and Lot 10, it made it easier to develop this stretch. When I thought of the concept, I approached the Prime Minister for approval and he said okay. He asked me when I planned to start and I said, ‘tonight’. That very night, the trees went up! And in six months, everything was done.”

Now a sanctuary for paper bag-laden shoppers and sightseers to sit back and enjoy a cool blended coffee, the concept of Bintang Walk seems almost a given.

A modest Yeoh shrugs off the credit for transforming the former red light district notorious for its wild nightlife into an upper-middle class social and shopping hub.

“Bintang Walk is a convergence of common sense. I can’t understand why people didn’t want to go ahead with something like this,” he says nonchalantly while sipping his wine.

“There wasn’t much opportunity for window shopping until Bintang Walk. You had to enter the shopping centre to buy something. Now there are shops alongside the road. Before, the streets were not pedestrian-friendly. The weather did not allow for this either. The common sense approach is to let people walk around the area and not confine them to shopping centres.

“This place will always be the pacesetter for other areas (in the country), “ he says. Bintang Walk, he adds, is to Kuala Lumpur what Champs Elysees is to Paris and Knightsbridge is to London.

The street today is the heart and soul of the city, spanning the Lot 10 vicinity that was designed for the young, energetic and fashionable, the elegant Ritz Carlton boutique hotel, the designer-store-dominated Starhill and the grand JW Marriott.

With world-class standards in merchandising, retailing and branding, Bintang Walk is smack in the middle of the two huge traffic churners – Sungei Wang Plaza, which has an estimated traffic of 2.5 million a month and Kuala Lumpur City Centre, with 400,000 visitors a month.

This is home to the family of Yeoh Tiong Lay, whose business empire took root here some three decades ago.

Yeoh frequently takes a stroll along Bintang Walk: ''I like to walk down and see who is there. Are they young, old…[and] check out the demographics. The best way to identify a popular street is to see where the beggars are as even they know where to go!''

Because of his commitment to uphold YTL’s reputation of providing excellent service, the avid golfer refuses to build or own a golf course as it would take away the pleasure the sport gives him. He’s worried that while dropping a ball, swinging or grabbing another club and moving to the next tee, he would only have one thing in mind: ''Is the turf smooth?'' He breaks into laughter. In fact, he refuses to mix business with anything that holds pleasure for him.

Pleasure comes in many forms for Yeoh – pasta, his family, work, travelling and opera.

“Family life is so important. I believe that a happy employee is one who has time for his family. So I sponsor my staff’s holidays and encourage them to take time out with their families.”

Time is never enough for one with a big family, “I have two girls sandwiching three boys (Pei-Cheen, Keong Yeow, Keong Shyan, Keong Junn and Pei Wenn), their ages ranging from 8 to 17,“ he says. But he makes it a point to gather the gang together twice a year during winter and summer for a family vacation.

To keep the spark alive, the romantic in him sets aside every Friday night for his wife Rosaline – and his wife only, with no exceptions. “We told ourselves that when we’re together, we wouldn’t talk about business or the kids. For the first six weeks, we had nothing to talk about!” he laughs heartily. They soon found a way around it though. Now they play tennis and swim together.

Clearly a family man, the British-trained civil engineer speaks fondly of his dad, 72, and mum, 70 who have undoubtedly played a pivotal role in shaping Francis the man.

Dad, Yeoh Tiong Lay himself, has always been the salt-of-the-earth type of businessman, he says with pride. “Most people study these things but I grew up on the (construction) site. I didn’t know anything else. My dad sent us all to study civil engineering.”

Yeoh’s penchant for opera, on the other hand, is a result of his Mum having “force-fed” him Mozart from a very young age.

He is eloquent about the pleasures of opera: “It works for me. It converges my soul, my mind… everything. Everything seems to fall into place, physically and mentally, when I listen to opera. It gives me great joy,” says the man who hired the great tenor Luciano Pavarotti to serenade the Prime Minister in 1993.

Yeoh’s nose for sniffing out business opportunities saw him bidding for a potential money-maker in the opera scene. In was in 1994 that he saw Andrea Bocelli – then a budding talent – rendering his masterpiece, the Mattinata, at a Pavarotti concert in Italy.

“He sung like an angel. I had to get him to sing for my (YTL’s) 40th anniversary in 1995. I wanted Bocelli’s manager to sell me his full recording rights. Of course he didn’t. But can you imagine, at that time, Bocelli was charging US$20,000 per performance; now he charges a million. I would have been able to make lots of money,“ he says with a glint in his eye.

Just as he was fuelled by his father’s expectations, Yeoh himself has unflinching expectations of his boys. Their future, he says, is to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, his father and himself by taking over the family business.

“They have to enter top Ivy League universities like Harvard and Cambridge. They must learn to cope with the pace of developments, which has changed drastically.”

And what if his children want to go on a different route?

“It’s up to them but they seem to understand their role in life so far. They can have their individual personalities but where vocation is concerned, they cannot drop the baton which I will pass to them, and which my father had passed to me and my grandfather to him,” he says.

“We are all pencils of God. They understand their calling in life. I’m running with the baton and hope they will not drop it. A lot of people are depending on us, lots of shareholders,” he says.

“But for the ladies, I’m a little more liberal. When they get married, it’s up to their husbands to decide what they want to do.”

Shortly after catching up with us, Yeoh cuts loose with a bunch of golfer friends over dinner. His flight leaves in less than an hour but he seems oblivious of that fact.

No one seems tired but the party begins to break up with much kissing and hugging. His friends rise as they watch him leave, almost as if they are missing him already.

Yeoh is still in no rush. He has the rest of the summer to take it easy.

For three glorious weeks, the man will stop sizing things up and mulling his next move. The anticipation of jetting off to laid-back luxury is almost palpable. He is, after all, off to Jardine de Los Querobines, Marbella, Spain – the popular playground of the rich and famous.

Lazily stretching his hands behind his head, he muses: “Sitting in my bungalow fronting the beach, watching the sun rise, greeted by fresh baskets of grapes, pears and oranges from my orchard. It’s wonderful. I do nothing and I’ve got the whole day to do it…”

Source: The Edge, Options - Cover Story, August 6, 2001