Word: dhanin
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...Dhanin Chearavanont isn't ashamed to say he wants to retire. Still putting in 14-hour workdays at age 65, the chairman and CEO of Charoen Pokphand Group (CP)--Thailand's one truly multinational corporation--says he has found time to meditate on the possibilities of voluntary idleness (he's worth about $1.3 billion, according to Forbes). Maybe he would unmoor his yacht and sail off into the South China Sea. Or maybe he'd head to his farm and tend to his prized fighting cocks. Maybe. It's just that things keep cropping up at work, he explains...
Things like the aftermath of Asia's 1997 economic meltdown. Dhanin says just before the Thai baht collapsed, he almost retired. But times were so tough that Dhanin, who had spent decades building a firm that now employs 100,000 people in 20 countries, found himself confronted by a bevy of bankers. HSBC was calling in about $400 million in loans made to CP, and the company didn't have the cash. Dhanin was forced to unload assets to raise money, including stakes in a Chinese motorcycle manufacturer and a brewer--companies he believed would thrive as the mainland market...
...next day, when a Democratic fund raiser named John Huang requested White House clearance for a Thai industrialist to have coffee with the President, no alarms went off. No one made much of the fact that Dhanin Chearavanont, 57, chairman of the CP Group, is believed to be the largest single foreign investor in China and an economic adviser to Beijing. When an aide to campaign czar Harold Ickes asked "if it would be problematic if this individual met briefly W/ POTUS," the green light came quickly from the NSC: "O.K. by Asia Affairs." Among the 11 NSC officials informed...