Pearl Lam: Welcome to Pearl Lam Podcast. Today I’m in LA at the Peninsula, interviewing and having Dominic Ng, a good friend, amazing person to speak to us. Dominic, can you give a little bit about yourself?
Dominic Ng: Well, it’s great to see you Pearl and in fact, I’ve known Pearl for many years, you know, in the art circle. But I actually was born in Hong Kong and, came to the US, back in the late seventies. And so I’ve been here for a long time. I’ve been the chairman, CEO of East West Bank for the last 32 years. So that’s still sort of the bulk of my career, and then still doing the same job today.
Pearl Lam: And also, you’re chairing the APAC as well, right?
Dominic Ng: Yeah. In fact, last year, you know, the White House appointed me to be the chair of the Business Advisory Council of APAC. And we ran, well, 120 meetings actually altogether last year, with the finale in San Francisco. So when, 21 economies leaders came to San Francisco to, talk about, you know, sustainability and digital innovation and, how to be you know, more effective in trade, investments and helping small middle market business and, indigenous business and so forth. So that’s the other full-time job that I had last year. Besides being the CEO of East West Bank.
Pearl Lam: I know that you started a bank at the age of 30, and your background is, is certified public accountant working in Deloitte, if I remember right. And then all of a sudden you started a bank at such young age. How did it happen? I think it’s really interesting for people, for audience who knows, immigrants, right? Coming here, having this opportunity, starting a bank. Explain to us, Dominic.
Dominic Ng: Well, I actually had no aspiration to be an accountant or a banker. But when I first came to college here, actually back in Houston, Texas. I started like a typical, foreign student. I started the first semester in Chemical Engineering.
Pearl Lam: Chemical Engineering?
Dominic Ng: Yeah, that’s right. But I was, you know, from Hong Kong, I study all these subjects with, Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, Biology. So my first semester straight As’ I really didn’t have sort of like any study that I needed to do. And I found that I was just wasting my time in America studying something that I already learned in Hong Kong. So I switched major to something what I thought would be more interesting to learn about American culture. So I switched to a communication major and learned about radio television for about a year. Then my brother came to visit me and he said, what were you doing? Are you thinking about being a weatherman in like a Corpus Christi in Texas? Or something like that? He said, this, this doesn’t make sense for me as a person from Hong Kong to look into a career that is anywhere near to radio, television or filming entities, any of those stuff. So at that time it was kind of, if I switch back to engineer, it would take me full four years to graduate. So rather than I wanted to graduate fast, I wanted to finish my degree in three to three and a half years. So, but to do that, the only professional major I could have got into and was public accounting, well, like accountant, to be a CPA. So I managed to finish school in three and a half years, got my accounting degree, and at that time, you know, the best job you can get as an accountant that actually for foreign student would be in the public accounting. So I was fortunate, like not all the accounting firms actually would hire foreign student,
Pearl Lam: Because to get a visa, right?
Dominic Ng: Yeah, exactly. Some of them, they just say that if you’re a foreign student, they don’t want do deal with the application for H1 Visa and all of that, but Deloitte and at that time it was Touche but later on became Deloitte Touche, actually was interested to hire me and willing to do all of those paperwork to help me to get a green card. It took years, but I finally got my green card, but I spent almost 10 years at Deloitte Touche. Started in Houston, and then a few, several years later transferred to LA. And when I was in LA one of my clients, actually from Singapore, and they have a huge conglomerate headquartered in Indonesia, they asked me to help them acquire a financial institution. So I bought a small bank for them in, LA in 1989. And then, but it was, it turned out it was too small and they wanted something bigger. So, I bought another bank for them, and at that time, in 1991, I bought East West Savings and Loan for them. It was still very small, but at that time it was much bigger than the other one. It was 600 million in assets, you know. And so I bought it for them and then helped them to make a couple more acquisitions, double the size of the institution from 600 million to over a billion from LA to LA and San Francisco. And in 1992, the regulators asked me to look into hiring an additional professional CEO.
Pearl Lam: But at the time you were their accountant as an advisor.
Dominic Ng: Yeah,
Pearl Lam: But not running the bank?
Dominic Ng: Yeah, I was the advisor and I, once I bought the bank, I was, I was chairing the, the, the board executive committee.
Pearl Lam: But you were still working with the, your accounting firm?
Dominic Ng: Yeah, yeah. And then, uh, and then I left the accounting firm and then working for them full time.
Pearl Lam: But because they were asking for you, right?
Dominic Ng: Yeah, exactly. But I was managing all their investment in United States and, and also helping them to expand their business into China as China just opened up. So, but in 1992, when the regulators said that we need better professional management, so they did talk to me. So at that time, I talked to them about, Hey, let’s hire a seasoned banker to run the East West Bank. And, they waited several months and then finally told me that no, it wasn’t a good idea. They said, you are doing it. And at that time, I as their advisor, I strongly advised them no, because I said this, by the way, at that time, East West was a bank that focused mainly with the Chinese American community.
Pearl Lam: Oh, really? East West has always been Chinese American.
Dominic Ng: Yeah. It was founded 50, 51 years ago focusing on helping the unbank to get banking business. Because at that time, back in the fifties and sixties, Chinese Americans were not able to get banking in the mainstream community.
Pearl Lam: Really?
Dominic Ng: Yeah, because think about it, in 1882, there was a Chinese Exclusion act that lasts about 60 years.
Pearl Lam: Chinese Exclusion Act?
Dominic Ng: And during that 60 Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, US got Congress have, uh, approved new law in 19 18 82 that exclude Chinese to be, American citizen. So technically the Chinese who lived in America from 1882 to 1942, they have no legal rights. So banks do not want to do banking with, and they couldn’t buy homes because the various neighbourhoods would not sell houses to them. So, that’s why the business leaders in the Chinese community wanted to start their own ba at their own bank. But it took East West founders literally almost 20 years to get a license.
Pearl Lam: Oh. Almost 20 years, to get a license?
Dominic Ng: So they finally get the license in 1973. And that was because they brought in two Caucasian in their application. And so that’s how the bank was started.
Pearl Lam: Oh my God!
Dominic Ng: And so Exactly, so from 73 all the way through the nineties, it was mainly focusing on serving the Chinese American population, but the bank thrived, simply because there was a continuation of immigrations. and first immigrants that did not have credit history came to East West Bank, were able to get mortgages, auto loans and things like that, credit cards. And, but when I took over, so when my shareholders insisted that I need…
Pearl Lam: How did they persuade you? Because you know, you are, you were having a very stable job.
Dominic Ng: Yeah.
Pearl Lam: In a, in a big, in, in a big, at the time it’s big eight, eight, you could do, you no, promotions?
Dominic Ng: Yeah. I was very, very comfortable with my job. I actually didn’t think that I would leave the firm, and I thought I would retire as a partner there.
Pearl Lam: As a partner. Exactly
Dominic Ng: I never really liked to move around anyway. I just, I kind of like a one job kind of person. So, but they were very convincing and they, talked to me about the, their aspiration about expanding the business in Asia to United States. And that in a way is what I’ve been doing at Deloitte and two, and connecting our Asian clients to us. So, and they are actually doing these investments, like buying banks, doing real estate projects in, in California.
Dominic Ng: They were looking into buying big brand into us so that they can have their manufacturing arm in Asia to basically add up the synergy. So, it sounds very exciting. They asked me to go to China to help them to look into potential growth opportunity.
Pearl Lam: 1989,
Dominic Ng: 1990, no, 1990, 92, 1991 and 92.
Pearl Lam: Yeah.
Dominic Ng: So it was very interesting. I’ve never been in China before, even though I was born in Hong Kong.
Pearl Lam: It struck me.
Dominic Ng: Never been. Yeah. So for 1991 and 1992, went going there in 1990, 91, 92. It was fascinating for me. Iwasn’t interested to be a banker in a Los Angeles local community here. I said, that job, it would take me like seven hours a week. I had nothing else to do. I used to work 70, 80 hours a week at Deloitte, too. I just didn’t know that the pace would be appropriate. And also, I really felt strongly as a professional that at my young age, actually I was 32 years old at that time, I said at my young age, it wouldn’t be appropriate to be a CEO of a financial institution that mainly catered to the Chinese American customers, because Chinese tend to respect the elderly.
Pearl Lam: Yeah.
Dominic Ng: When they see a person that looked like a kid, they didn’t think that it would be the right person that, for safety and soundness purpose. So I said, I didn’t have the right image, no matter it, it didn’t make sense for me to try to explain it to our staff, to our customers. And the competitors will use that to our disadvantage to say that, you know, they brought in the kid, you know, the wealthy billionaire from Asia brought in the kid, and then this is going to be a disaster. I said, you don’t want to do that. But the husband and wife, they said, no, you’re going in. No matter what. So I went in and I thought I would just work four years and be done. But four years turned into now 30, 32 years.
Pearl Lam: But then you expanded because you saw were taking your whole mission changes.
Dominic Ng: Yes.
Pearl Lam: It’s not just servicing the Chinese Americans, but you were taking Western funds from the west to invest in China.
Dominic Ng: So my first idea was to come up with the vision mission statement. And I said, well, the bank was East West Federal Savings Bank, East West. Why are we only doing business with Chinese Americans? We ought to be the financial bridge between the east and the west. So the first thing I did, I told the shareholders, I said, we ought to be expanding into the mainstream community, be that true financial bridge between the east and west. We help, we’ll never abandon the root and the founding principle of helping Chinese immigrants. I said, that’s such a great mission.
Pearl Lam: Yeah,
Dominic Ng: We ought to do that. But in addition to that, in order to help our Chinese immigrant to better assimilate in American society, to enjoy the full benefit to be US citizens, East West needs to take the lead to be in the forefront and march down to the mainstream communities, when we are completely involved with the mainstreams, we can help our customer to reach further.
Pearl Lam: But the thing is, how do you persuade in the west to put the funds in China? When China was in 1991 1992 is very early.
Dominic Ng: You know, at the beginning, our customers that we had attract from Asia to invest in United States, they’re from Hong Kong. They’re from Taiwan, they’re from Asian…
Pearl Lam: Asians.
Dominic Ng: Yeah.
Dominic Ng: They are basically Chinese diaspora, From China diaspora, all these various except China, like in Hong Kong, in Taiwan, in Singapore and Malaysia, in it’s
Pearl Lam: All the overseas Chinese.
Dominic Ng: Yeah. Overseas Chinese. And so that’s what I got business from in the early nineties. And that matched up with mainstream business in US, because for them to invest in properties, for them to invest in any kind of business in us, they need to work with us business. And so we, East West Bank myself particularly, the bank was so small, I was able to be the lead business development person that I personally went out.
Pearl Lam: How many staff at the time when you began?
Dominic Ng: Uh, 200 people.
Pearl Lam: Now?
Dominic Ng: We have 3,400 people now. And yeah.
Pearl Lam: And then your asset grew from 600 million to 52 billion?
Dominic Ng: No, to now we are 70 billion. 70 billion. Yeah. So we are completely different size. You know, we, I bought East West at 40 million, and today we are over$10 billion in market value. You know, so it’s a very different size bank. And we are now the largest bank headquartered in Southern California, and then the second largest bank headquartered in the state of California. So it’s a different kind of scale. But what it took, and it took 32 years to get here, you know. But what I would, uh, wanted to point out is that at the beginning, you know, is really the, the focus is that converting from a savings loan to a commercial bank?
Pearl Lam: Was It difficult because you are, you know, it is basically you are Chinese, I mean Chinese American banks. Okay. Going, I mean, being in IPO. So yeah. So were the, what was the reaction at the time?
Dominic Ng: Well, and it was interesting because, uh, we are not, we actually were asking for, uh, quite a premium too. It is not like, uh, we sell it cheap and all that. We asking for a price to book value, which is much higher than today’s, kind of multiple. But most institutional investor never heard of East West Bank.
Pearl Lam: Exactly. Exactly.
Dominic Ng: We’re a California bank we never got into.
Pearl Lam: And also, and also you were Chinese overseas, the, the Aspira.
Dominic Ng: So, yeah. But, uh, what I did was, it took me only two weeks to raise all the money.
Pearl Lam: Two weeks.
Dominic Ng: Yeah, two weeks. And then I flew into many different cities, and in particular New York, several, I mean like a whole week in New York. And then, and then the rest of the week in all the other, all the rest of the country, targeting mainstream institution investors. But the PitchBook that we use was basically the mission of East West Bank. We would be the bridge between east and west. We show the financial performance for the last few years, which we did pretty decent. Not as good as it is today. We are the best perform. Last year we ranked as the best performing bank by S and P, by Forbes, by a few other, sort of banking, publisher. We weren’t that good at that time, but we had a pretty good vision. The other thing that I had was, I personally invest myself and my chief financial officer, we both personally took our savings
Pearl Lam: To buy the, the shares
Dominic Ng: Withholding the tax that we have to pay. We actually sold the mutual funds that we invested for all these years at Deloitte. I took the money. I said, I’m buying East West Bank stock at the same price that you are buying. I’m not buying it at a discount. I’m not asking you to give me shares. I’m buying the same price. And many of them, to my surprise, were just for that reason, was so impressed. Said, yeah, if you are willing to put your, your own money,
Pearl Lam: Own money?
Dominic Ng: And so much of your own money into believing this bank, we will put 10 million or we’ll put 15 million. And for them, those are just peanut, peanut peanuts. Some change, right? Yeah. So just like that, we brought in all the investors. And then the other thing I asked for was, I said, if I ever be able to do this management buyout and took over this bank what I wanted, I have one wish. They said, what my one wish is that every year I want to grant stock to every single one of East West Bank employee. And I, what I said is, I don’t care whether they’re part-time, full-time employee, every single employee gets stock every year And I said, everyone get the same amount, and I would want to do it at Chinese New Year. Every Chinese New Year, you get the red envelope. Instead of getting like $10 cash or you know that I said, you get shares, I give them stocks. And so we started with $1,000 a year. Every, I mean, I got 1000. They get 1000. If you’re a part-time, you work 20 hours a week, you work one, you got a thousand, everyone’s equal. And the whole idea of doing this is that I say,
Pearl Lam: Hey, this is communist!
Dominic Ng: Yeah. In a way, I kind of say, every one of you work for me. Yeah. I’m the boss. Right. But I work for every one of you. Cause you are my shareholder. So the whole idea is this symbiotic relationship. That is that if you are a shareholder, you own the bank, I work for you. And then you also work for me because I am the most senior manager. And the symbiotic relationship, get everybody to feel like they have this, the, the pride of ownership.
Pearl Lam: Yes.
Dominic Ng: Have them have the pride of ownership. And I’m proud to say today, for those in 1998, when they get their first grant all the way to today, even a part-time teller that make almost like minimum wage, they now have, if they haven’t sold any of those shares, just like the annual grant, Chinese New Year annual grant, they’ll have like four or $500,000 net worth.
Pearl Lam: Wow. It’s very good.
Dominic Ng: So my people are doing fine. Right. And then for those who actually get additional stock bonus every year, they’re doing well.
Pearl Lam: They’re doing very well.
Pearl Lam: So Dominic, so let me ask you, you know, how when did you incorporate art culture and philanthropy inside your mission? Because you started to actually acquire Chinese art and donate it to MOCA LA. So to, to make sure that they understand Chinese contemporary art because support and using culture as an exchange to, to have the East meet West. So, the western culture can actually appreciate and understand Chinese culture much more. When did you think of doing that? And how did it all happen?
Dominic Ng: You know, sort of the seed was planted in 1992 when I said, we ought to be a bridge between east and west. We ordered to help Chinese or the, or Asian immigrants to assimilate and benefit the full, I mean, to be US full, you know, get the full benefit of US citizen and, and then find a way to reach further in American society. And if you think about that, it’s not just financial, it’s not just helping them financially to reach further. It has to be a more socially. So from my perspective is that we started with the first, the first phase being the financial bridge between east and west. Okay. So in the nineties, I felt very comfortable that myself at Deloitte Touch, or most all my clients are mainstream anyway. So I was able to bring in mainstream clients at East West Bank. One at a time in the nineties. I felt pretty good about it. And then in, once we get into 2000 in the next next century, so to speak, I started looking into getting more involved with the community. Have for East West Bank to be a bank with a mainstream. If I’m not visible in the community, nobody notices.
Pearl Lam: Right.
Dominic Ng: So, from then on, I took the first challenging assignment. I became the chair, campaign chair of United Way of Greater Los Angeles that year, in year, that was year 2000. The first Asian American ever, ever in the greater Los Angeles area to be the campaign chair. And I raised a record amount of fund, 66 million year this 2000, this, this is 23 years ago.
Pearl Lam: Very good. 23 years ago.
Dominic Ng: So broke the other people’s record. And the reason I was able to do that, I had a lot of help. And one of them was Eli Bro. Eli gave me 5 million to make sure to make sure I broke the record. Because he said, well, how much you need to break the record? I told him about the amount. And he said he had, he had a couple of more million more, just to make sure I broke the record. So, having a lot of these very established business leaders in the community who all looked at me as their young, small bank, CEO. And then, and also the reason I did it was to help Asian America, Asian American to be more visible in the community and participate more in the mainstream community. So I think that he then asked me to replace him for the Asia Society in New York, which I did. And the next thing happened, he talked to me about joining the board of MOCA which I actually declined. The reason I declined was I felt like that I wouldn’t add much to MOCA cause I wasn’t at that time actively engaged with the contemporary art scenes. But I came up with a different idea for him. I said, Hey Eli, what about I would acquire a collection of contemporary Chinese artwork and donate to MOCA.
Pearl Lam: That was when?
Dominic Ng: That was 2003 when I had this conversation with Eli. And he said, oh, that’s a brilliant idea. I said, look, as by doing that I would be able to help MOCA
Pearl Lam: Yes.
Dominic Ng: To be the first, uh, museum in the United States to have a decent collection of contemporary Chinese artwork. Wouldn’t that be good? So the museum liked the idea. He liked the idea. I love the idea. ’cause I thought that by East West donating this artwork will help, you know, artists to get exposure
Pearl Lam: Yeah.
Dominic Ng: Will help, uh, Americans to get also exposure of Chinese contemporary art. The Chinese art is not just antiquities. It’s not just terracotta soldiers and 10 horses. It actually have great contemporary artists doing great artwork. So that’s what I thought that I would go into that direction and help supporting art and then help bridge, bridge the culture between east and west. So it was 2003 when it started. We continue on for two or three years, and we brought in like about 20 some odd pieces of artwork and for MOCA. And, but the arrangement was, since I don’t want them to put everything into storage after a few months of exhibition. So I said, while you donate it, we’ll place it at the East West Bank
Pearl Lam: Because it was amazing. Because we went to do, we visit East West Bank. It is all the Chinese contemporary art and, and artwork all, all for the bank, which is very impressive.
Dominic Ng: Yeah. And then what, what we, we decided that it need to be permanently shown. So if it is not gonna be shown permanently at MOCA, let’s just display it at East West Bank. ’cause we got a lot more foot traffic that they can get. And so by doing it that way, whenever there is a piece that need to be loaned out to any museums around the world, or if MOCA wants it, they can have it. But in the meantime, we just display it at the bank. And so that’s the arrangement. It worked out really, really well. Yeah.
Pearl Lam: So, so when did you, you yourself, started to build your collection?
Pearl Lam: And also, you know, what is, I mean, you’ve been doing east, west, west, uh, east, but with today’s geopolitics situation, does it affect your business? Because, you know, how do you bring money investment from west going into China when the whole American politics is saying that they don’t want funds from the west going in?
Dominic Ng: Yeah. And actually it’s a lot harder, but that’s why, actually we’ve done better and better financially. The reason I say we’ve done better and better financially is because, because now the political environment is so difficult. Most banks wouldn’t want to have anything to do with,
Pearl Lam: China
Dominic Ng: Cross-border business.
Pearl Lam: Yeah. Cross border.
Dominic Ng: Or they got confused sometimes. they got confused, even if it’s not China. They said, we don’t have anything to do with the Asians, you know, so to speak. It is interesting because in the, I would say 10 years ago, many banks in the boardroom start talking about China strategy 10 years ago. But four or five years ago, many banks in the boardroom talk about make sure that we exit every business
Pearl Lam: Yeah, yeah.
Dominic Ng: Strategy that have anything to do with Chinese companies. Yeah. So for us, we understand the political landscape. We understand what are still business you can do, what are the business you cannot do. We understand that that is sort of out of our footprint and we shouldn’t be messing with it. Same thing in China. They also have their challenges that we want to make sure that we do not get involved with that kind of business. But let’s think about it. There’s a lot of business still going on between US and China. the, the shipment of goods hasn’t stopped, in fact, trade between US and China still huge. And, and East West is just a sliver compared with all the trade and investment that going on between US and China. So we are still involved with the business, but we staying out of, out of all of those other stuff that we shouldn’t be involved with. And somehow we, because of our continued engagement, we actually financially doing better, even with tariffs and with all these restrictions. Yeah.
Pearl Lam: Yeah with the tariffs and all that,
Dominic Ng: Because we, we know how to navigate in the rough sea. We are truly expert of cross-border banking. We understand how to navigate and we actually add values. And then more and more customers actually are doing the cross-border business with their banks that they used to do banking with. in. And in the same way, like, uh, if you look at in art, uh, during Covid, during covid, everything shut down, museums, art galleries, artists, they were all looking desperately and saying that how do we sustain our business when everything shut down and when the US government are providing financial support, the US government used banks to distribute, you know, the grants to all of these different, like whether you are artist, whether you are doing business or you are art galleries or your museum, they’re all eligible to receive grants. But some banks busy working. Some banks are a little bit lazy and not working.
Pearl Lam: I know that. I know that since it’s Covid, East West Bank has lots of galleries account. Yeah. Most of the galleries account is, were East West Bank. Yeah,
Dominic Ng: Exactly.
Pearl Lam: It is amazing. Yeah.
Dominic Ng: And my private banking teams just work 24 7 for about several weeks in a row. And whether they are museums, art galleries. And, uh, and through them they introduce us to the artists and we just like one customer at a time and we open the accounts, bring them on and help distribute the government, sort of like, funding to them, government loans to them and help them to get through that rough period. But through this, uh, Covid time, we have so much more exposure with so many galleries and then artists and then museums. I said East West Bank now the largest bank headquarter in Southern California. We have a bigger role, bigger scope, bigger responsibility. So we start doing banking with African American artists, Latino artists, women artists. And I said, why shouldn’t we promote them? Because we are always the one that helping the one who need help. Most women business, Latino business, African American business, these are all the underserved minorities.
Pearl Lam: Absolutely.
Dominic Ng: We should support those artists too. So we start, when I first brought the artwork to MOCA, those were the top of the line Chinese contemporary artists,
Pearl Lam: All the big names.
Dominic Ng: We started going to the emerging Asian artist, uh, several years ago. And then the last four years we collecting from Lauren Halsey, you know, like Devin Johnson and Alfonso Gonzalez and Lucy Bo. And then we just,
Pearl Lam: Because art, art is not really about Passport.
Dominic Ng: Exactly. Yeah.
Pearl Lam: Because you’re doing across culture.
Dominic Ng: Exactly. So we are reaching out, reaching further, and then we are helping out Chinese collectors who are appreciating, uh, African American artists appreciating Latino artists and women artists. So this is something that gave us a lot of joy to be that cultural bridge in between. So we are not here just to help non-Asian Americans to appreciate Asian art. We are also here helping Asian to appreciate collectors to appreciate, get better exposure Yeah. To the international art scene.
Pearl Lam: you know, you never intentionally using art or culture as a soft power. But it all this happened by default because of your interest, right?
Dominic Ng: Yes. I mean, because I looked at it with, uh, anytime you wanted to do something, well, you have to have a passion to it. And I’m very interested in art. I’m influenced by my wife. She’s actually, always, she’s a good painter, but she just wouldn’t tell people that, you know.
Pearl Lam: Oh, oh yeah. Oh my God. I should ask her.
Dominic Ng: We have actually, well, next time you don’t remember, but next time we come to the house, we have a few of her paintings on the side. Yeah. Wow. And, uh, my daughter, yes,
Pearl Lam: Of course. Your daughter.
Dominic Ng: She, she’s at Christie’s, you know, so, they both are very engaged in art. So it’s easy for me to get those inference. And I have very good friends in the art world like yourself, actually have introduced some really brilliant artists to me, which I really appreciate. You know? And, uh, it’s not just about appreciation of art, but you know, in terms of having the opportunity to engage with these brilliant artists
Pearl Lam: Yeah. Engaging with them.
Dominic Ng: It just makes life so much more fun.
Pearl Lam: Absolutely.
Dominic Ng: And I, what I found is that the collectors that we help, that they love to engage with living artists, of course. What is a good thing about collecting contemporary artists that you’re dealing with living artists. I don’t have to worry about fake work. Because I see the artist just finished the paint and then I say, okay, I’m taking it. Right. Yeah. So it’s, it’s fun. And I think that’s the part that, I think having that passion, the drive, and that makes it easier to get, get the, mission done appropriately.
Pearl Lam: Dominic, I understand, and I know that you are also musician, you play guitar, you have a whole collection of guitars as well? Well so I remember you once told me that when and when you were studying secondary school, you were in a band. And that helps you doing business in China because the karaoke! You have to sing to network without the singing. You can’t network with all the people. So you have to sing and you have to drink, drink. Am I right?
Dominic Ng: Yeah. That is right. Uh, half right. I never have the alcohol, alcohol capacity to drink. In fact.
Pearl Lam: So you, so you sing?
Dominic Ng: Even today, I when, when I need to go to places that I need to drink. Yeah. Or, or, or it, it’s appropriate to be have the party to be drinking. I have usually, I usually get two designated drinkers to come with me. Yeah. You’re two stop to drink For you so they can just, I mean, and get it all taken care of. I so I don’t have to drink at all. Uh, but, uh, yeah, the, uh, particularly to early years at East West Bank in 1991, 92, 93, 94, 95. Well,
Pearl Lam: you have to get business yeah!
Dominic Ng: Yeah. Those years, uh, karaoke was big, big deal.
Pearl Lam: Big
Dominic Ng: In order to get customers to appreciate my sincerity, let’s just grab a mic and sing a few songs. So, uh, yeah, it,
Pearl Lam: It’s a very different kind of entertainment as a and as in the West.
Dominic Ng: In fact, initially it was challenging because when I was in the band, uh, I play, , rock and roll music or folk, you know, uh, progressive folk music. Uh, so it’s like, uh, it’s all, you know, like whether the Beatles, Eagles, and then that kind of songs, you know, and to sing karaoke, I need to sing Chinese.
Pearl Lam: Chinese,
Dominic Ng: which I didn’t know too many, but I go to a karaoke shop, bought a laser disc, and then, watch it a few times is not that difficult. So, I mean, and then after I watch it a couple of hours, I, I have several tunes that I know I can do it, you know?
Pearl Lam: Then let me ask you, you know, you are in China a lot of times, so how are the Chinese feelings about America, uh, American politics, especially when they withdraw and not investing in and in China, do they feel the impact?
Dominic Ng: Oh, yeah. I mean, very, I mean, to many of them, there’s very discouraging for the last several years because, for, I guess by and large, you know, a few decades since, uh, Xiaoping’s, uh, started, you know, like open up China in the eighties Yeah. Open for a few decades. US China relationship have always been more collaborative. And occasionally there is some, you know, udisagreement. But I would say by and large, very much more collaborative. Until I guess in two, um, since 2017, I mean, very contentious. So most of the folks when the business folks in China, they just wanted to find a way to have a constructive relationship. And they, what they hope for is that, agree to disagree and work on whatever they can agree with, and then trying to respect each other for disagreement. But that formula doesn’t work anymore. Doesn’t, yeah. Yeah. It doesn’t work anymore. I mean, for that, to that extent, I mean, there are, there are a lot of somewhat I would say discouragement. But I, I think that by and large, uh, I don’t see US and China can decouple because there’s just so much,
Pearl Lam: So much trading going on
Dominic Ng: Trade and business going on. Yeah. There’s so much, actually, even cultural exchange already happened. And you, if you look at, in the United States, we have, we have millions of, Chinese immigrants that living in us. But it’s the same thing. Even in Europe, in Australia, Canada, there are so many Chinese immigrants already settled in, in, in those, different countries. I, I, I looked at it as that, by and large, I think that the western world and China would need to find a way to somehow build back a somewhat constructive type of relationship. And I do believe that at some point it would happen. US and the rest of the world pretty much have outsourced the supply chain.
Pearl Lam: Yes, yes.
Dominic Ng: Almost completely to China. So this sort of like, uh, rearranging the supply chain or decoupling, it’s just not viable.
Pearl Lam: But don’t you see that last few years, they realized that China is the you know, is the main supply. And, and because of the covid, they cannot delivered. And so it was broken of supply chain, and a lot of factories has moved to Vietnam.
Dominic Ng: Mm-Hmm.
Pearl Lam: Bangladesh and, and all that. So it must hurt China because China needs that, that, that in this, this industry.
Dominic Ng: Yes.
Pearl Lam: Going, so do you feel that there will be a better, you know, better system in and in China, they, they recognize what is going on and therefore in the neo, I mean, in the next, I mean, in the future, the relationship would be better.
Dominic Ng: Yeah. In fact, because this is what I looking at, because it’s not healthy for US to have 90% of theimport coming from China, of course, as neither would be how healthy for China to be depend on, depend on so much on like the US or maybe all the western world. So what China’s been doing right now, which they’ve been doing actually for several years, but they have to accelerate the domestic consumption.
Pearl Lam: Yeah.
Dominic Ng: So those things are all happening right now. Mexico, there are a lot of Chinese investment in Mexico right now. Why? Because that’s what us wanted to Yeah, because because Import coming from Mexico. Yeah.
Pearl Lam: They want to have made in Mexico. Yep. And even is a, is a, is a Chinese, factory. Yeah. I, you know, India now is growing. You are East, west Bank.
Dominic Ng: Mm-Hmm.
Pearl Lam: Well, are you gonna open anything in, in, in India? Because all of a sudden the focus of this year, I mean last year has been Japan and India.
Dominic Ng: Yeah. Uh, not yet. We have we were very proud to have a lot of our associates or employees that are of Indian descent.
Pearl Lam: Yes.
Dominic Ng: However, uh, as an organization, we don’t have the sort of like very strong technical knowledge or the cultural understanding of India like we do in China,
Pearl Lam: Of course
Dominic Ng: All the Southeast Asia and, and then what not. So what we do is that do what we do best. You know, it takes a lot to understand the nuances between the East Asia culture and the US and trying to understand the difference and figure out products that work best for the cross-border banking clients. And India is a completely different
Pearl Lam: Completely different,
Dominic Ng: culture. And it would take a much longer time for our team members to sort of like develop the expertise. And if I wanted to do that, I probably need to acquire a new group of, uh, strong experts that Understand.
Pearl Lam: Of course. Of course, of course. It is completely Different.
Dominic Ng: We may, we may get there, but not now. Yeah. We may, we may get there, but not, not at this point.
Pearl Lam: Because all, you know, last year we know that all of a sudden the focus is India, Japan. How about Japan then? Uh, Japan?
Dominic Ng: Well, Japanese already have many major financial institution that came to US back in the eighties, which Japan is fully banked. That’s why East West would not offer that much value to, let’s say, Japanese, Japanese corporations because, you know, the MUFG, you know, uh, the, the major Japanese banks has been in the United States for the last 40 some odd, 40 some odd years. So we, we can’t add much value, which is very different than the business from China.
Pearl Lam: Yes
Dominic Ng: Yeah. Becauyse when let’s say for a business like BYD which makes electric batteries and electric buses, when they come to the United States, they have no bankers with them. And East West can setp in and then help them, and then connect them to mainstream American business. But like for Japanese, they already been there for a long time.
Pearl Lam: You are also bringing some, I mean, you are the chairman of the American Friends of m plus. Right? So the whole idea, the whole backup is, is you are a personality, a well-known person in America. So our Hong Kong museum M Plus has been deeply needing your help because we want to have American collectors there. We want to have American donors. How are you seeing for the next, for the future? How are you going to bring to Hong Kong anyway? You are Hong Kong.
Dominic Ng: Yeah, I, uh, I think optimistically, I think that it will get better. Unfortunately for the last five years, Hong Kong has been going through the most devastating time.
Pearl Lam: Most devastating, right?
Dominic Ng: I mean, with the first is the protest, protest. And then, ’cause Hong Kong got locked down longer than anybody else, the protest in effect was somewhat of a lockdown. And then the Covid four years. So I think Hong Kong just started coming back. And last year
Pearl Lam: Actually, Hong Kong just relaxed the mass last March.
Dominic Ng: Oh, wow. Yeah. See this, that’s why I just came back. And then last year Art Basel, I was pleased to see that, well, with M Plus also just opened. And so we just kind of just started get back together. And I hope, like this year, Art Basel we have even a bigger crowd internationally. As long as there are more people start coming to Hong Kong attending art fairs and seeing M Plus what an incredible, beautiful building with great artwork. I think at that point, at some point, you know, when the crowd start coming back in it would be much easier for me to sort of exercise my chairmanship to do the, to do the right thing.
Pearl Lam: ’cause, because I was told even by Art Basel, there’s American galleries who refuse to go back to Hong Kong. Mm-Hmm. Um, because they’re talking about the protests, the human rights and, and all that. Yeah. Being the chairman of American friends must be really difficult.
Dominic Ng: Yeah.
Pearl Lam: Because the perception of Hong Kong was so bad that it puts off many of the even trustees of museums and they’re not going back. Yeah. So that’s why American Museums,
Dominic Ng: For the last four years, I did much better as the chair of the collection and exhibition committee of the Academy Museum in Los Angeles.
Pearl Lam: ’cause of the motion picture.
Dominic Ng: Yeah. The reason is that the building is here. And then it’s easier. I mean, when you have a building, everything’s going on, and Academy has a big brand, it’s much easier for me to do the work. But then the American Friends Foundation, uh, for M Plus was challenging because physically, first of all, the building was not finished.
Pearl Lam: Yes.
Dominic Ng: With Covid, no one could visit anyway, so there’s no way to even market it. And, and then with all the restriction of you know, uh, you know, quarantine and all that kind of stuff, it just, it really, we were putting on the hibernation mode, you know, basically it was dormant and, but maybe, maybe now we can, we can get some people, but
Pearl Lam: The perception of China, of Hong Kong was, has been really not, I was talking with some, some American museum people, they’re not bringing any trustees there because the perception of Hong Kong now has been damaged.
Dominic Ng: Yeah. And that’s why it’s something that we will need to, uh, watch and see how it progress. Because, it may be, it may take a few more years before, and then it, it will require, you know, a concerted effort also from, you know, the, the West County and Cultural Center and plus, and then, you know, Hong Kong government with the tourists, you know, association. They all have to sort of like step in to see how they can reshape the image of Hong Kong if they can’t.
Pearl Lam: Absolutely.
Dominic Ng: Uh, is it, is that a way that they can find a way to get Americans to start looking Hong Kong as one of the gem of Asia? So, but time would tell. I mean, at this point it’s too early for me to really be able to size up how soon Hong Kong will get back to what the old glory,
Pearl Lam: The old Glory.
Pearl Lam: So nice to have you here, Dominic, even after last night’s dinner, there’s so much we can talk about from geopolitics to finance, your background. But I will continue to catch up with you when you’re in Hong Kong. Thank you for joining the podcast.
Dominic Ng: Great. Thank you Pearl for inviting me here. And then I’m looking forward to seeing you in Hong Kong.
Pearl Lam: Thank you.
