Billionaire with common touch

Press, 23 September 1987, Page 28

Billionaire with common touch

By ANDREW BROWNE NZPA-Reuter Taipei Taiwan shipping magnate Chang Yung-fa grabs a tray and queues for a lunch of noodle soup with the rest of his staff each day in the canteen at his Taipei headquarters. The chairman of Evergreen, the world’s largest container shipper, has a personal fortune exceeding SUSI billion. But by ruthless cost-cutting, he is sinking his rivals and making his 63-ship fleet the envy of an industry reeling from a global shipping slump. The former shipping clerk, aged 59, has just made himself even wealthier by listing his major company, Evergreen Marine Corporation, on the local stock ex-

change in Taiwan’s largest share offering. “I never dreamed 1 would become so big,” he told Reuters. Neither did his competitors. As freight rates plummeted during the early 1980 s, Chang kept Taiwan and Japanese shipyards busy by ordering 24 giant vessels. The company he launched in 1968 with a second-hand ship bought on borrowed money managed to undercut market prices up to 10 per cent and racked up impressive profits with a round-the-world service.

Last year, the huge United States Lines filed for bankruptcy in the United States. Evergreen group showed profits for the year of 5U593.9

million. “We are just frustrated, real frustrated,” said an executive with a rival American line. Chang’s passion for efficiency is legendary. On a map covering a wall of his office, he tracks the daily progress of his fleet — state-of-the-art vessels guided by computers, each with a skeleton crew of 14. Masters and other officers are rotated from sea to shore duty in a work schedule set by Chang that would scandalise unionised labour in the United States. Evergreen’s no-frills headquarters reflects attention to detail. The building is a no-smoking zone. Male staff have regulation short back-and-

sides haircuts and women wear company issue green jackets — the same green that daubs every thing from coffee mugs to toilet bowls. Chang, a vegetarian who neither smokes nor drinks, does without a personal chauffeur and uses the company carpool. Until recently, he lived above his office. “I have full control over every member of my i staff,” he said. “That’s how I save costs.” ' Chang, born in the ■ northern port of Keelung i when Taiwan was a Japanese colony, worked ; his way up from a lowly • clerk in a tramp steamer ; to become a ship’s mas- ! ter. > “Only people who start ■ low and push themselves

to the top can survive,” he said.

Chang speaks fluent Japanese and retains ; close links with the J powerful Japanese trading «| house, Marubeni, which helped finance his first "a ship. '“I Evergreen prides itself ® on Japanese-style paternalism, with cradle-to- ; grave health insurance and transport to the | office, but Chang said his methods wereall his own. “I never let my staff go on Japanese or American j management, courses,” he >| said. . ■

“During the good times, shipping companies took on graduates from Harvard. They thought they were getting the best but in the end, they all failed.” < •