WHO’S WHO

Local Personalities: Eric Lai

by Dr. Iain Corness

The chairman of the Wisepower Group, which is developing the La Royale Beach Project at Jomtien, is the affable Eric Lai. A relaxed and happy man who says, “By nature I am a positive character. I am happy. There are good years and there are bad years, but I am enjoying life.”

However, there is a lot more to Eric Lai than someone who is sitting back in the deckchair of life, watching the world go by. To start with, Eric was born Eric Lai Kwong Fai and he began the interview by describing himself as “a typical Hong Kong product, born and educated there.” But the typical Hong Kong product, as can be seen by his own ancestry, did not originate on Hong Kong Island, but came as refugees from communist China. Chinese immigrants with nothing, other than their own innate talents.

Eric’s father did have a talent - he was an artist. That talent he passed on to his son. “I was crazy about art, and that’s why I did architecture at university,” said Eric. He almost did not make it to university. Like many a young student, he was lax in applying himself to his school work, after all, art was more fun, but finally he did pull up his socks and in his final year he topped the school.

Following graduation with Honours and Distinction he settled into the life of an architect in an office. This kept him interested for a few years, but Eric felt there was more out there that life could offer him. “I began to become fascinated by marketing and PR. I wanted to create something,” said Eric, using his hands like an Italian as he waxed enthusiastic about the concept, continuing, “Being just a designer I was only working on a very small bit of a large jigsaw.”

He could see that the larger jigsaw was in the corporate world, and so he joined the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels group, the holding company for the Peninsula hotel group. Very quickly his innate business sense was evident and he became the executive director of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels group, overseeing a an increase in annual profit on property-related revenue from HK$ 24 million to over HK$ 650 million in nine years.

As part of that expansion, he began visiting Thailand. His role was to look for opportunities of expansion for the group. “I liked Thailand a lot,” said Eric. “Instead of buying one piece of land, we bought four!” He continued, “In the 1980’s I came over every week. I was fascinated by the opportunities. I liked the people I dealt with and the potential in starting something here.”

I asked Eric if he could speak Thai when he first came over and he admitted that he could not, but this was not a bar to business. “Bangkok is a gateway city in the region. It is very cosmopolitan and it was not difficult to get by.” These days he has some Thai, but not enough for every situation, but Eric says, “I’m well covered by my executives and staff. We use English (and sometimes Cantonese) in the office.”

There was another factor that made business dealings in Bangkok attractive for Eric. “The Thai-Chinese like dealing with the Chinese. It almost made me feel at home!”

The potential that Eric could feel, and the relative ease of doing business, were enough for him to resign from his position as executive director in 1990, to come to Thailand to work on his own projects.

He began with a partnership with the ex-chairman of the Peninsula group and they developed the Empire Tower in Bangkok, which at 56 storeys was the tallest office building in the capital.

Shortly after this he met the Sahaviraya family that had, in Eric’s words, “A nice piece of land beside the Chao Phraya.” That “nice piece of land” became the start of SV City, the largest single phase development in Bangkok. “The first building was finished in 1996. Then came the financial crisis of 1997,” said Eric. That would have been the start of what positive Eric called “the bad years”!

Eric Lai continued to be positive, however, and began to put much effort into the Wisepower Group, of which he is also chairman. “We wanted to make ourselves a little different,” said Eric. Being developers meant starting from a concept that included a mixture of buying and selling, understanding future needs, construction and sales and after sales service. “It’s a one-stop concept,” said Eric.

That concept is carried out by three separate sections of Wisepower. “We have an engineering company to do the design, but the final design has to be signed off by architect Eric. “It’s my hobby these days. It’s fun,” said Eric with a wide grin. “Then there is the development company, under its managing director, Khun Sombat Chancharoensin. I’m behind Sombat,” said the increasingly busy Eric. “There is a third firm, too, that does sales and leasing and property management. I have an MD to be in charge of that,” said Eric.

I gained the decided impression that Eric was a hard working chairman who had his fingers on the pulse of each of these sections. This was reinforced by him saying, “I don’t look just at one aspect of any development. I have to develop a long term relationship too.”

Eric Lai has been resident in Thailand for many years now, and is seriously considering Thai citizenship, in his long range plans. Other long rangers deal with the direction he feels the company should head, but he did say that he considers that many projects on the Eastern Seaboard are very viable. “I have the instinct for which way we should go, but I have to remain flexible.”

Amongst his ambitions is an abstract concept of wishing to do something for society that could eventually be self-supporting. “Then I’ll go back to art,” said the energetic Eric!