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Continuing the saga of how Tan Sri Lim Goh Thong boldly braved the odds and scaled the heights to become the towering legend that he is today. This is his impassioned story told in his own words and republished with permission. |
Close Calls
Being on-hand at every stage of the Genting project had its perils. I was often so absorbed in what I was doing that I forgot the dangers lurking around me. At least six times I nearly lost my life. I am really lucky to be alive to tell the stories.
My first brush with death occurred at the 21/2-mile point on the Genting road. I was busy helping in surveying when a newly felled tree came crashing down from a higher level and missed crushing me by inches. I escaped with only minor injuries on my shoulder.
The second incident happened at the 5th mile Genting road. I was driving a jeep up the side of a mountain to inspect road works when it skidded and came to rest with its rear wheels dangling on a cliff. I managed to crawl out safely without tipping the jeep
into the ravine far below.
In the third incident at the 7th mile Genting road, I was also driving up a steep slope when, during a change to a lower gear, the brakes failed. The car slipped backwards, gathering speed. At the critical moment, I steered the car sharply onto the mountainside to stop it from plunging three or four hundred feet into a ravine.
My fourth narrow escape occurred at the site of the old helipad in Genting Highlands. It was dusk but the workers were still busy. Six workers and I were standing near a bulldozer when suddenly the ground gave way. I felt the movement and leapt aside just in time. Thankfully, so did the other workers. If our reactions had been slower, we would have been swept down the ravine and buried alive under
tons of mud.
Back home that night, I said to my wife that I had gone to Hell but was told to turn back and continue with my work.
The fifth incident happened at the 6th mile Genting road. A tractor was pulling down a row of bamboo trees. Suddenly, a 30- foot tree came crashing down in my direction, hitting me right on my head. If I were wearing my usual bamboo-leaf hat instead of the safety helmet that my assistant had bought me just days earlier, my skull would have been smashed. Still, the impact caused me to bite my
tongue and I was bleeding profusely for a while.
My sixth close call also occurred at a work site around the 6th mile. An excavator was moving back and forth to clear up the place when one of its wheels hit one end of a thick 20-foot wooden beam. The impact sent the other end of the beam lashing savagely towards me, hitting me on my waist. Fortunately, it missed my left kidney, the only one I have. My right kidney had been removed more than 10
years earlier following the discovery of a malignant tumour in it.
Carrying out development in mountainous areas is fraught with danger. I was lucky to
have survived the six close brushes with death. But sadly, one worker fell accidentally
to his death from the 14th floor of a building under construction in Genting Highlands.
Apart from this, I am glad to say, there had been no other fatal work-site accidents during the entire development of Genting Highlands since our first mountain survey expedition in 1964. I must thank the Chin Swee deity for seeing me safely through the Genting project.
There was, however, another glitch before Genting's official opening. When it was all geared up to commence business in January 1971, Kuala Lumpur and its surrounding areas were hit by the worst rainstorms in a century. The road to Genting was closed by landslides at 180 locations. It took us some four months to repair the damaged sections. Finally, Genting opened its door for business on 8 May
1971.
It was a dream come true for me.
Difficult Years without Income
For seven years, from 1965 when we began constructing the access road right up to 1971 when Genting Highlands started business, I spent all I had on the project without getting a cent back. Besides putting in all my earnings from the Kemubu Irrigation Scheme in Kelantan, I sold my 810-hectare rubber estate in Segamat, Johor, to raise RM2.5 million. In addition, I invested all the money I had made
from iron mining, sub-contracting and hardware business. The project was a heavy drain on my finances, so much so that at one stage, I was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. It also took a toll on my health.
Close friends took a dim view of the prospects of the Genting project, which they feared might ruin me financially. It was not surprising that when I invited them to take up stakes in the venture, they not only turned me down politely, but also counselled me to drop the entire scheme.
One day in 1969, I was having lunch with a group of friends including Tan Sri Tan Seng Kee, Mr Lim Chooi Seng and Mr Fong Yen San in one of our regular weekly gatherings in a private club when I made them an offer to become shareholders and directors of Genting. I asked them to invest RM1 million in return for a 10 per cent stake in Genting, whose paid up capital then was more than RM10 million.
But none of them showed any interest.
Mr Lim Chooi Seng told me in earnest that running a business in a wilderness would not be as easy as running his Magnum 4D gaming business that did not require so much capital because he could ask for deposits from others and use the funds for operating capital. I would need to hire many workers and invest heavily in infrastructure.
I took the snub stoically and vowed to press on all the more resolutely.
Later, when Genting was showing promising signs of success, Mr Lim told me that he was willing to take a stake in it, but it was my turn to turn him down politely.
On hindsight, it was a blessing in disguise that my friends spurned my offer. No doubt I had to fight a lonely battle, but the absence of interference from other partners enabled me to be nimble in decision-making. If there had been more heads and more opinions, the
Genting project would have been bogged down by protracted decisionmaking and unlikely to have succeeded.
A Surprise from Tunku
My original vision for the Genting resort was a highland retreat where the old and the young of families could come to holiday. I had no illusions that Genting, with only its refreshing, cool climate to offer in its initial stage of development, could pull in the big crowds. My plan, therefore, was to start with only a modest 38-room hotel.
But my conservative plan was revised drastically following some encouraging words from the Tunku. It was a bright, sunny day on 31 March 1969 when our Bapa Malaysia Tunku Abdul Rahman made his first visit to Genting Highlands to lay the foundation stone for its first hotel, Highlands Hotel (now Theme Park Hotel). In his speech, the Tunku said he was moved by my efforts to develop, without
Government help, a highland resort for all Malaysians and thus greatly contribute to the country's tourism industry.
To help expedite the development of tourism in this remote area, he said the Government would favourably consider an application from Genting to operate a casino.
Encouraged by the Tunku's words, I decided immediately to upgrade the proposed Highlands Hotel to a 200- room hotel.
Several days later, I was having tea with a friend, a Mr Lim, in a cafe on Imbi Road when a group of youths came in and huddled in hushed talk in another corner. Their suspicious behaviour attracted the attention of a waiter who was a relative of my wife's. Pretending to be serving customers, he edged closer to them and eavesdropped on their conversation. He heard my and Mr Lim's names as well as
the word `kidnap' being mentioned. Sensing danger, he informed my wife and cautioned me to be careful. I told Mr Lim about it right away but he did not take the threat seriously.
I had planned to visit Macau and South Korea to make a study of casino operations and hold talks with potential partners. In view of the kidnap scare, I decided to bring the trip forward.
On 20 April 1969, I arrived in Hong Kong with my assistant Haji Abdullah before proceeding to Macau to meet Mr Stanley Ho, the owner of Macau's only casino. At the dinner he hosted that night, I broached the idea of cooperation. He only smiled. I understood what he meant: I was in no position to talk about co-operation since I did not even have the casino licence yet.
Upon my return to Kuala Lumpur, I was saddened to learn that my friend Mr Lim had been kidnapped. But the bad news did not distract me from my top priority: to secure my casino licence.
On 28 April, the day after my return, I submitted my application for a casino licence to the Government through the Tunku's Private Secretary, Datuk Nik Hassan. It happened that a Cabinet meeting was held that same afternoon and my application was tabled for deliberation.
Later in the afternoon - just six hours after I submitted my application - came the good news that it had been approved and I was asked to collect the approval letter. Thus, Genting Highlands became the first and only casino licence holder in the country.
Later, I was told that during the Cabinet meeting, the Tunku asked Tun Dr Ismail, the Home Minister, for his opinion on having a casino on Genting Highlands. Tun Ismail supported the idea on grounds that a legal casino would curb illegal gambling activities and hasten development of the country's tourism industry. He also felt that the location of the casino on top of a mountain would make it
relatively easy to ensure its security because there was only a single access road. With no objections from other members of the Cabinet, the casino licence was promptly approved.
As fate would have it, the May 13 incident happened soon after that. I believe that had I been a little tardy in my application, I would not have been granted the casino licence in the ensuing political sensitivity. This was borne out by the fact that another party's application for a casino licence after the incident was rejected, confirming the Government's stated policy that no more casino
licences would be approved.
I informed Mr Stanley Ho and transmitted a copy of the approval letter to him. A fortnight later, I met him again in Hong Kong to discuss the issue of cooperation in running the casino. He could hardly believe that I had secured the casino licence so quickly and commented that I was the fastest man in the world to have achieved such a feat. However, for certain reasons, we did not succeed in
reaching an agreement.
Two years later, I finally struck a deal with Chun Rak Won, the operator of the only casino in Seoul, Korea. We signed a three year agreement with his company which was to provide the expertise in managing the Genting casino.
Unfortunately, the co-operation lasted only nine months before it was terminated by mutual consent. Genting took over the entire casino operation, learnt the ropes of the trade over time and eventually mastered the management skills.
Meeting with Tun Tan Siew Sin
I recall my meeting with Finance Minister Tun Tan Siew Sin in his office some time in January 1970. A key issue discussed at the meeting was the duration of the casino licence to be issued to Genting Highlands Hotel Berhad (the forerunner of Genting Berhad).
Tun Tan informed me that the casino licence fee had to be paid in advance before the issue of the licence and on subsequent renewals. As Genting was only a start-up company and needed a lot of capital for its operations, I appealed to him to allow the substantial licence fee to be paid in instalments.
To ease the cashflow burden on Genting, Tun Tan proposed that the duration of the casino licence be reduced to three months, which, in effect, amounted to allowing four instalments for the annual licence fee. I told him frankly that a quarterly casino licence was too short to be comfortable. He assured me that there was nothing to worry about; as
long as Genting complied fully with the terms of the licence, the Government would continue to renew the licence automatically. To allay my apprehensions, he cited other businesses including banks, departmental stores and coffee shops whose licences were renewable yearly. He noted that none of those licensees, who had not contravened their licensing conditions by straying into things that they
were not supposed to do, had problems of licence renewal. With this assurance, I accepted his proposal that the casino licence be issued on a quarterly basis.
Pioneer Status
Soon after Genting Highlands started business during the early tenure of Tun Abdul Razak as Tunku's successor, I applied to the Treasury for pioneer status. I did this despite having been told that Genting Highlands did not qualify for pioneer status because of the nature of its business. I believed that tax incentives in the early stage of development were not only vital for us but also
profitable to the Government later on.
An appointment was made for me to have a dialogue with six senior officials from the Treasury, the Department of Inland Revenue, the Attorney-General's Office and the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Before the date, a senior management staff advised me to abandon the idea. I smiled at him and said, "Don't worry. You just accompany me there and be my interpreter."
The dialogue opened with a statement by a Government official that Genting's resort development activity did not fall within the definition of a qualifying industry for pioneer
status; therefore, it could not enjoy the tax incentives. Not only that; like casino operators all over the world, Genting should pay higher rates of taxes than those applicable to other
enterprises.
The official's view was, of course, perfectly correct under prevailing laws. But being one who believes that the laws of a country should be dynamic to keep pace with the requirements of changing times, I had come prepared with an argument backed by a comparative analysis that showed how the Government could benefit by giving Genting pioneer status.
Based on an annual taxable income of RM2 million, I argued, Genting would be paying RM800,000 income tax every year (the corporate income tax rate then was 40%), or a total of RM4 million for five years. While this amount was relatively insignificant in the context of national revenues, it was critical to the company during the period when it had to invest heavily in resort infrastructure
development. A five-year tax holiday would enable Genting to plough back all its profits into developing hotels and other tourist facilities, including a man-made lake, a cable car system, a golf course and the Chin Swee Temple.
Upon completion, these facilities would attract more visitors and generate earnings many times what the resort would otherwise be able to. The tax that the company would be paying after the tax holiday would easily exceed the total revenue that the Government had foregone. More importantly, the Government would have fattened a revenue cow that
promised to keep on giving good milk for a long, long time.
By granting pioneer status to Genting, the Government would in effect be giving it a loan that would be amply repaid with a handsome interest.
The officials saw merit in my argument. On their recommendation, Genting was granted a five-year pioneer status with effect from 8 May 1971.
In 1976, the Government approved our application for an extension of Genting's pioneer status by one more year.
I truly appreciate the Government's granting us the tax incentives so essential for rapid development in the early stage. It proved to be a win-win decision. The tax the Government collected from us later was far greater than the amount exempted during the tax holiday.
The above is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of My Story by Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong published by Pelanduk Publications.
