On October 23rd 1997, I was working for Nikko Research Center as a stock market analyst. It was the day the Hang Seng Index crashed 1,211 points or 10% to 10,426, thus confirming the start of the Asian Financial Crisis (it reached its nadir the following August – with the index closing at ~7,200).
After the market had closed, Jake Lloyd-Smith, a journalist from the South China Morning Post, called me up for my reaction. He and I had talked many times, so I trusted his judgment. I tried to paint a picture of the mood in the office during the session. The group of analysts that I worked with was a pretty close bunch, and, on normal days, we spent a lot of time fooling around in the office. However, the mood in the office that day was very different from normal. As I explained to Jake, we were mostly gathered around the stock exchange terminal looking with stunned amazement at the carnage that was happening. There was the occasional group photograph around the terminal, because we all recognized that something special was happening. Generally, though, the mood was grim. Jake asked me how the experience compared with previous market crashes? To which I replied: “I was here in ‘87, and for Tiananmen Square, but this ranks as number one”. This description turned out to be terribly true.
The next morning, I picked up a copy of the SCMP as usual, and read the front page headline screaming “Hong Kong Triggers Global Sell-off” and the accompanying story about the market’s dramatic decline the day before. To my surprise, Jake had quoted me word for word. Even describing how we were huddled in grim silence around the stock terminal and how the decline was worse than anything I had experienced in the past 10 years.
Now, you might think that this was some sort of claim to fame, but don’t be so hasty. The real claim to fame is that when I moved to Kowloon Tong with my wife and first son, we became regular regulars of Dan Ryan’s restaurant in Festival Walk – we still are. The decor at all Dan Ryan’s restaurants in Hong Kong is dictated by a set pattern consisting of masses of photos and memorabilia scattered around the restaurant. To my great surprise, at the entrance of the newly opened Kowloon Tong restaurant was a framed version of the front page of the SCMP from October 24th, 1997 – the one with my quote. So, every time we entered the restaurant, which was very often, I would point out my name on the front page hanging on the wall to either my son or to whoever was accompanying us to eat. Most were impressed, although my wife and son found it a bit tiresome after a while.
If my quote signaled the end of the bull market and the start of five years of economic depression for Hong Kong, the mass street protests of 2003 also marked the beginning of the great recovery from those dark, dark days. To the credit of Dan Ryan’s management, the front page of the SCMP with my foretelling of the doom that was to befall Hong Kong was replaced by another front page, from the same newspaper, proclaiming that Hong Kong had once again found its feet and was moving forwards again. I much prefer this optimistic tone, and, although I was sad that my name was removed from the walls of my favorite restaurant, I was pleased in a way, because, as compensation, management took a photograph of the family and hung it on the wall (just below the swordfish). If you’re ever in Dan’s, go and have a look!.
One final claim, although it’s a bit odd, is that I took a photograph of a friend of the family, called Micheal Young, at my father’s 60th birthday party. After seeing the photograph, Mike asked me if he could use the image for the dustcover of his latest book which he had just finished, called Waggoner’s Way. I’m not sure if this is a real claim to fame, because I was not credited. But I think it’s sort of neat that a photograph I took ended up on the back of a published work (in this case, The Waggoner’s Way is a history of my father’s former regiment The Royal Corps of Transport).
I’ve actually had quite a bit of writing published when I worked as an editor for a banking magazine in Hong Kong called AsiaBanking. As the Managing Editor, I was required to write the editorial each month. As a research analyst, I was constantly being “published”, although the audience was obviously very narrow. As a final claim, I’ve been quoted in publications ranging from Forbes to the New York Times, Washington Post as well as CFO Asia.
