His rags to riches story is well known to Malaysians, but now The Sunway Group’s founder Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah has embarked on another journey — giving back to society through education. He tells Jacqueline Toyad and Anandhi Gopinath that he wants to do in Asia what John Harvard did for Harvard University. The vehicle for this dream is the soon to be launched Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Foundation.

When it comes to deciphering the inner workings of a successful entrepreneur, everyone has their own idea. It’s no different when it comes to the topic of Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Fook Ling, the founder and chairman of The Sunway Group comprising Sunway Holdings Bhd and Sunway City Bhd.

His is a rags to riches story that many love to hear — the legend of the man who started a small tin-mining business with RM100,000 in paid-up capital and built it into a conglomerate with businesses abroad that include civil engineering and construction, property development and investment, building materials, trading and manufacturing, information technology, tourism entertainment and hospitality, healthcare and tertiary education. 

His is the story of a dreamer who visualised a kingdom and built it, conquering a land desecrated by mining and transforming it into a multibillion dollar “integrated resort city”. Cheah’s kingdom pulsates from a gargantuan lifestyle and entertainment complex that comprises the Sunway Lagoon Resort Hotel & Spa, Sunway Pyramid shopping mall and the Sunway Lagoon theme park, which was formerly an “80-acre hole” and stretches out to a rich mix of commercial and residential properties that will soon include Sunway South Quay, an enclave of luxury homes built around a lake.

Within this kingdom lie two of Cheah’s proudest achievements — two well-established tertiary education institutions, Sunway University College and Monash University Sunway Campus, and Sunway Medical Centre, a top-notch healthcare provider with the best facilities and medical practitioners that money can procure.

Knowing all of this, one can’t help but call Cheah a big dreamer. Who else would have built a theme park smack dab in the centre of a developing township? Who else would imagine building a shopping mall in the shape of a pyramid, with a giant sphinx as its landmark?

“This,” Cheah says, gesturing around him, “is my playground. I like to see things being built, being accomplished and managed well. And I will continue with it over time until I am unable to do so.”

• • •

We meet Cheah at the heart of his empire, the 18th floor of Menara Sunway where his office sits. Our interview takes place in the adjoining conference room and sitting in with us are two of Cheah’s trusted mates — Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam, corporate adviser of The Sunway Group (since 1995), vice-chairman of the Board of Sunway University College and member of the Monash University Malaysia Board of Directors, and Datuk Razman Hashim, deputy chairman of The Sunway Group.

They are coming together today to introduce the Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Foundation, which will be launched within the next month or two. The foundation owns Sunway College Sdn Bhd, or Sunway Education Group Sdn Bhd as it will soon be known, the umbrella under which the group’s education brands fall: Sunway University College, Sunway International School, Monash University Sunway Campus and Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine, Monash University Sunway Campus.  

With the aim of generating funds through philanthropic donations and corporate sponsorships (all of which are tax deductible), the foundation will work to inject these monies into scholarships, research and charity.
“In 1986, I formed Sunway College through a twinning arrangement we pioneered. It has since become a reputable institution. More than 10 years later, we formed strong linkages with Monash University, enabling us to get Monash to eventually set up a campus with us. Monash is highly regarded... it ranks 40 in the world, out of 300 universities (listed),” Cheah tells us proudly. “I can easily say we are the best here now because no other university in Malaysia is ranked higher than 200 on this list.”

For Cheah, this is another dream come true. He is a great believer in education and has famously declared, more than once to the press, that John Harvard (after whom Harvard University is named) is his hero.
“We have worked very hard to build this group. From my heart, I’ve always wanted to give back to society. Over the last 20 years, since Sunway College started, we have given out more than RM42 million in scholarships. In 1998, I put Sunway College into a trust, with Tun Omar Ong Yoke Lin as the chairman. And this year, I’m taking it to another level with the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation which will be governed by five trustees that I trust and have been individually approved by the government,” reveals Cheah. The trustees are himself, Ramon and Razman, whom the chairman labels “the founding fathers of the trust”, and Tan Sri Lin See Yan and Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye.

The trust is worth a lot of money, but Cheah does not want the figures to see print. “When you give something, you don’t say how much it’s worth,” he reasons, hoping we don’t press the matter any further. “This is a genuine desire to give back to society. Me and these two gentlemen,” he says, gesturing to Ramon and Razman, “are the founding trustees. We have put in a lot of effort and pain to make sure that this thing is done very well; we provide high quality education, we don’t shortchange our students and all the money made is ploughed back into the institution. Today, this group here has RM15 million cash. All my shares now are with the foundation. If I were a crook or tried to be funny, I can easily siphon out money from this company, but all those professors and high-level people down there are not stupid. If I take money from them, they will know what I’m doing. They will say that this is not a foundation, it is Jeffrey Cheah’s pocket. No, I can’t do that.

“This is a genuine desire to give back to society. My dream is that this institution will be around for a long, long time after we are gone. I was telling my son and daughter who are working here that after I’m gone, hopefully they, and then their children, will continue to work on it. They’ll never have a chance to sell it away. It has been structured in a way that this education part cannot be sold.

“So we are currently putting on our thinking caps about how to protect this perpetually. Like Harvard University… John Harvard, more than 300 years ago, he endowed Harvard College with a trust and today, you can still see how strong they are. It’s still run by a trust, a foundation, run by six trustees. It is worth US$33 billion, and they are able to give scholarships, bring top brains into the university.

“My dream is to do it in Asia. Hopefully, Asia will one day give us this kind of endowment. In the West, the Europeans and the Americans, those rich men when they pass on, more often than not, endow their wealth to universities. Here, we have built up Sunway University Group and I’m not taking a sen or giving any shares to my children, but I’m giving it to Malaysians so that hopefully, something happens in the future — 20 years from now, 50 years from now, the Asian business people, the rich people, when they pass on, they will give part of it to the university or to the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation for Education.

“Why I’m so passionate about and so keen on helping or giving back through education is because I like seeing young minds being educated. Education brings out the best in young people. Without it, what are we? Today’s world is very competitive and we need to create something of high standard, which produces very good graduates. Our foundation also states that we will put a lot into research and we will also give in terms of scholarships and other charities that the trustees feel are appropriate for us to get involved in. Our main drive is for quality education.”

Ramon chips in, “Integrity is important. The trust has to be well organised and fully accountable. We hope that because of the integrity, we can continue our provision of scholarships to needy, bright kids — there are a lot of bright kids around who don’t have the money to study. If we handle it properly, we are hoping to get funds from other sources.”

Ramon, who went to Harvard University, receives letters as an alumnus every two to three weeks, asking for donations. “It doesn’t have to be big. Everyone gives a few dollars and it just piles up. They are now one of the richest in the world, so students are given first-class training.

“I’d like to point out that we hope this could well be the first foundation of its kind here, committed to education the way we are — no interest, with the money ploughed back. If everyone can do this, we’d be a wonderful country. Universities, government or private, are in difficulty, so if there were more foundations like this one, then more students will have opportunities for education.

“In a sense, we’re setting benchmarks and (sending) a message across the country. We’re going to make sure that this is a good example; it will enable interested parties to emulate it or to contribute. If each corporation adopts a school in their neighbourhood, can you imagine the impact? For big companies, it’s really nothing to provide RM2,000, RM5,000 or RM10,000 a month for maintenance. Some of these schools are in terrible condition... that they have become a risk to the children.”

Cheah also has plans to make Sunway Medical Centre a teaching hospital and intends to build a community hospital on an extra seven acres of land next to it, where the bulk of teaching and research will be carried out. “As we are affiliated with Monash, they have helped us to develop very good healthcare facilities,” he says. “In the development of our country, we realise that the most important things to address are the demands for quality education and healthcare.”

Cheah is certainly motivated.

“If you have the passion, the chance of succeeding is very high. If you have that ‘tak apa’ or ‘that’s good enough’ attitude, you won’t get very far. Sometimes, you can be really tired, but you want to see it through, done well, then you don’t feel tired anymore. After all, this is my playground. In 1998/99, we were in deep trouble and we needed to recapitalise. People were knocking on our door and asking to buy 51% of Sunway Lagoon and the hotel. I asked them, ‘Why do you want 51%? Why don’t you let me continue to manage this monster that I’ve created?’ They insisted on 51%, so I declined, knowing that this was my playground. If I gave this up, I may pass on very fast because I don’t have a playground anymore.”

Cheah pauses. “I’m happy that I made the decision to go my way.”

• • •

Cheah’s childhood was mainly spent in the small town of Pusing in Perak. Located about 6km from Ipoh, it is a quiet town. His father worked as a lorry driver while his mother took care of the 10 children who overran the household.

As the sixth of 10 children, he admits that he was able to get up to a lot of mischief. “I was pretty much left alone,” he shares.

“There were so many of us… nobody cared about me,” he quips. “Luckily, I didn’t become a gangster or take heroin. But I was naughty. To be honest, I was not academically inclined. My father and mother were illiterate… they didn’t even go to school.”

Of course, one could surmise it was from here that he realised education was one way to a stable future, especially after watching his father go from lorry driver to mine worker and then to mine manager before eventually going into the tin-mining business himself... to become bankrupt three years later.
Not to say that his family did not enjoy any good times. Fortunately for Cheah, when it was time to further his studies, his father had enough to send him to the Footscray Institute of Technology (now Victoria University) in Melbourne.

“It was 1964. My father was mining a section which was quite rich and he was doing very well,” he says. “How did I select where to go? I decided to find something that would lead me to business. So, I selected accounting and got myself a business degree.”

Apparently, his choice to go to Melbourne was based on the fact that a friend of his had also decided to go there.

“It served me well lah, looking back. It was the right choice that I made,” he adds proudly. No arguments there.

Upon returning to Malaysia in 1970, Cheah went to work at the only job he would ever apply for in his whole life — as an accountant for Asia Motor, a major motor assembly plant at the time. This went on for all of three years before the entrepreneur within him stirred and he realised that the job was not exactly his cup of tea.

Then finally, in 1974, he bought a piece of land that had been mined out by the British.

“The British knew that their days were numbered in terms of having assets here. By 1974, their leases for land were up for renewal and they knew that the government would not renew... because they were foreigners. So I took the opportunity to negotiate with Associated Mines and got the 500 pieces of land for a song. No one wanted them,” says Cheah. “So, I started the business with tin mining, then I grew to quarrying, to sand mining, to leasing, then trading and manufacturing… from then on, we continued to grow until 1984, when I listed Sunway Holdings, or rather Sungei Way Holdings Bhd.” 

From then on, Cheah’s business grew to include property development, education, hospitality and entertainment, information technology and healthcare.

“I like to be my own person. And I don’t like working for somebody else,” he explains. In fact, there were instances in his childhood that hint at a born leader. Even as a teenager, he would be the one to round up the gang to “do lion dance performances every Chinese New Year”, at which young Cheah would play the drums. Money collected from these performances would be given to charity.

“We went to houses, the fish market and other places to play this ‘toh-chang, toh-chang’, and people would give us money that we would later on give to the Chinese school,” he says.
Ramon, listening to all of this, quips, “That’s how CSR started.”

Cheah laughs. “I was a small-sized fellow even then, but for some reason, I was always the leader of the pack in fighting and all those nonsense lah. Luckily, there were no drugs in the picture… although I did try smoking a little bit then. Of course, I look back and realise how stupid I was.”

Today, Cheah uses his leadership for more positive practices.

“You can ask people about how fussy I am, even when it comes to picking up rubbish. More than 18 years, I’ve been doing this — if I see a piece of rubbish, I pick it up. These days, after watching me, even my driver is picking up litter he sees. This is what you call mindsets changing. Walk into Sunway, you’ll see very little rubbish. If I see any big rubbish, the man in charge of the area will get it from me. For me, it is very important to lead by example.”

Cheah admits that these days, smoking is one vice that he abhors. “I am very much against smoking,” he says. “Everyone in this organisation is against smoking. And I have been able to stop my senior executives from smoking. If they came in as smokers, they have given up now.

“And I’m still pushing very hard to get those who are still hooked to quit it. I always say, you are putting poison into your body, why are you so stupid? And our Sunway Medical gives out free tablets for people who want to quit smoking. You take those tablets for two weeks and then you won’t feel like smoking anymore.”

Cheah has taken his anti-smoking campaign to another level — the first for any developer — and made Sunway a smoke-free resort. When  the company was bringing global dance music brand and nightclub Ministry of Sound into the resort, Cheah told his general manager, “No smoking.” This sent the GM into a panic as it seemed like a suicidal move to have a smoke-free nightclub in Malaysia. “Without smoking, we cannot sustain,” he implored Cheah, but the Sunway chairman was adamant.

“Nightclubs are where the habit of smoking is inculcated. I told my GM, ‘Never mind. Even if we lose some customers, we have to do it. So now we’ve done it, everybody is happy. You go into the club and you come out smelling very nice. You go to Zouk or someplace and you come out with your hair and even your underpants smelling of cigarettes,” he quips. “I don’t like being a second-hand smoker. You go to Ministry of Sound and it’s beautiful! You want to smoke? Go outside.

“You can go off on your own and smoke yourself to death, but not on my premises.”

For him, he isn’t just developing property, he also has the chance to exert some influence on the community. In his bid to make Sunway not just the ideal location for a home but also a safe haven, the township has its own auxiliary police, trained by the police department. “They wear uniforms and have limited powers of arrest within this area. It helps to prevent and reduce crime,” shares Cheah. In 2002, Sunway was declared a safe city by the police and just a few months ago, Cheah was made chairman of the Malaysian Crime Prevention Foundation (MCPF) for Selangor, with Selangor CPO Datuk Khalid Abu Bakar and Datuk S Subramaniam as deputies.

“We will do our best to help reduce and prevent crimes. The MCPF is not the police, but we are finding other ways and means to educate the public,” adds Cheah.

A lot of his personal beliefs are reflected in his business decisions. For instance, while he has a finger in many a pie, he has not, in the 35 years of Sunway Holdings, ever got into the gambling business, which has proved quite lucrative for many businessmen. 

“I am dead set against gambling. Do you know how the machines are programmed to make you lose?” he asks. “We were offered two casino licences, but we turned them down because we do not believe in gambling as a business.”

Cheah says he does not want his wealth to be built on a business that causes heartache to families for it would be “sinful money”.

“We still hold very strongly to this principle.”

It would be fair to describe Cheah as a bold and gutsy businessman in a culture that seeks comfort in the status quo, in a corporate atmosphere that for years has relied on kowtowing to the right figures to move ahead or to gain the bigger contracts.

With more than three decades — and riding out two recessions — behind him, there is no argument that Cheah has staying power. And while his business card may read “chairman”, he behaves as an emperor, building his little utopia.

• • •

The tagline for The Sunway Group is “Turning Vision into Reality”. It may well be the title for Cheah’s memoirs should he ever decide to write one. He is about dreams and he is about vision; however, he is also a realist.

Recessions are no joke, and no amount of dreaming can pull you out of one if hard work and tough decision-making were not part of your repertoire. Cheah’s realism is evident in the houses that border the Sunway township. Cheap looking and made quickly to generate cash flow for someone who had little, Cheah admits that those houses were among the things he would have done differently.

“Tun Mahathir (Mohamad) asked me once, ‘Why did you build those cheap houses?’ I said, ‘Sir, you remember, I came into this piece of land without much money, so I had to build houses to sell.’ I had to build houses that suited the market at the time. If I had built expensive houses when there wasn’t a market for them… what for? I had to cater for the market then. I would’ve done it differently if I had had the money… you have to do certain things first in order to get that money,” he explains. 

“In 1985, there was a recession in Malaysia. We were badly hit… almost lost everything. We have been through two bad recessions and now we are going through another  again, but I think we are very well prepared. We are much, much wiser after the two storms we went through, and all of our people have learnt their lessons. And we have come up with a good plan and strategy to stay afloat. We are affected of course, but I don’t think we will be struggling as much as we did during the last two.”

Cheah proves that while you may need to be a realist to survive in the business world, you do not have to be a cynic. You can still dream, remain true to your ideals and enjoy the many pleasures that life can offer to someone of his stature. For instance, he is an avid golfer and enjoys his wine to the point that he has built his own cellar.

The wine cellar sits in a natural cave, in the heart of the limestone hills adjacent to Tambun Hot Springs in Ipoh, Perak, where Cheah is currently completing a “world-class health spa”. A wine connoisseur, he has an impressive collection of wines from almost every country in the world in the 8,000 sq ft wine cellar. He usually enjoys the wine with his family and guests during special occasions, and during his visits to Tambun. When the spa opens in June (tentatively), the wine cellar will be part of the establishment that will complete the Sunway City Ipoh township in Tambun.

Cheah also has an enviable collection of fine cars that leaves us drooling.

“I have a Lamborghini, a Bentley, two Rolls-Royces and a Mercedes AMG 55… they are all different cars to drive,” he reveals, adding that his favourite car to take when he’s driving to Ipoh is the Lamborghini. We do assure him that we are not reckless drivers but if he needed, we would be available to chauffeur him in his Lamborghini on his next visit to the Sunway City project.

“I’ve brought it up to 230kph,” Cheah admits sheepishly. “But that’s dangerous,” he adds, lest we act like Schumacher on the way back to the office.

As fun as his playthings may be, Cheah says his main passions are still developing education and healthcare as well as watching the Sunway township flourish. He says one more phase remains — five office towers that will complete the whole package. The chairman hopes to attract multinational companies, pitching Sunway as a one-stop city where all your needs, from commerce and recreation to residential and healthcare, can be met.

“I always ask them, ‘Why do you need to be in KL? All your workers can stay around here. We have the entire infrastructure ready for them’.”

He says this matter-of-factly, as if it were a preposterous idea not to consider Sunway as a prime location for an MNC to set up office. But in his voice is pride at having transformed a derelict piece of land where even grass could not grow into a thriving and safe township, offering the best of education, healthcare and quality of life.

This article appeared in Options, the lifestyle pullout of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 744, March 2-8, 2009.