Robert Kuok: A Memoir
Political Memoir Biography Business Memoir Entrepreneurship Asian History Southeast Asian Studies Economics Rich & Famous
Robert Kuok: A Memoir is the only authorised life story of Malaysia’s richest tycoon, the man who built a regional sugar-trading post into a US$12 billion empire that spans Shangri-La hotels, palm-oil plantations, cement plants and media holdings across five continents. At 376 heavily-illustrated pages, this 2018 first-edition hardback from Beaufoy Publishing gives readers an unfiltered, first-person account of how a modest Cantonese family boy, schooled in Japanese-occupied Malaya, out-thought colonial cartels, out-maneuvered political strongmen and quietly became the “Sugar King” before anyone outside Asia noticed. Business students, young entrepreneurs and arm-chair historians alike come away with concrete lessons on guanxi-building, commodity arbitrage and brand creation, all delivered in Kuok’s own elegant prose—no ghost-writer glow, just sharp, self-deprecating stories that read like a master-class in modern Asian capitalism.
What separates this memoir from the usual CEO victory lap is its rare candour about post-war Southeast Asian geopolitics. Kuok names names, recounts back-room negotiations with Tunku Abdul Rahman, Lee Kuan Yew and Deng Xiaoping, and explains why he moved his corporate flag to Hong Kong just ahead of the 1997 hand-over. The book’s 50 archival photographs, many never before published, show everything from the first bags of Kuok sugar being unloaded onto sampans in 1953 to the opening gala of the Kowloon Shangri-La, giving collectors and researchers a visual timeline of a private empire that kept no official archives. Young adults will appreciate the entrepreneurial arc—starting with nothing but family credit and a leased lorry—while older readers gain insight into how Kuok balanced Confucian values with global capital markets long before “stakeholder capitalism” became a buzz-word.
This particular copy arrives in very good condition: crisp, unmarked pages, tight square binding, original colour dust-jacket unclipped and protected, no ex-library stamps or inscriptions, from a smoke-free home. At 8.8 × 7.8 inches and just over 30 oz, it is a substantial, shelf-worthy volume that sits comfortably between classic business biographies and high-end Asian history. Because the first print-run sold out quickly across Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, clean copies in English are now scarce online; grabbing one now secures both a compelling read and a collectible title that appreciates as fast as the commodities Kuok once cornered.
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