CapitaLand CEO preaches perseverance and paranoia

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Fat is out. Fighting fit is in.

Singapore-based CapitaLand's (CATL.SI) Chief Executive Liew Mun Leong advises staff to work out in the morning, eat less oily noodles and weigh themselves daily, in one of his many lectures about the route to corporate success.

"If we are not fighting fit, how can we cope with this everyday high-speed life?" Liew, who jogs daily, wrote in a book compiled from his Sunday emailed musings to employees.

"It is going to be our corporate culture to be fit," he wrote in a chapter titled "There are no fat CapitaLand executives."

Liew, 62, highlights the importance of paranoia as well as keeping fit -- qualities he views as essential to running Southeast Asia's biggest property developer.

Married with two daughters and one son, the former civil servant's obsession with perseverance and perfectionism has helped CapitaLand cope relatively well in the financial crisis.

The developer raised $2 billion from listing its shopping mall unit CapitaMalls Asia (CMAL.SI), shares of which rose 6 percent on Wednesday in Singapore's biggest IPO in 16 years.

"When it comes down to investing billions of dollars in a project, one should be aggressive and decisive but also paranoid... Speed is important in business and we must be prepared for the worst to happen," he wrote in another chapter titled "Remember Murphy's Law."

Liew became CEO of CapitaLand in 2000 after the company was created through the merger of government-owned Pidemo Land and DBS Land, the real estate arm of DBS Group (DBSM.SI).

"He's capable, visionary and pretty astute. He's good at analyzing the market situation and positioning the company for long-term opportunity," said Frankie Lee, co-head of property equities at Henderson Global Investors, one of the largest institutional investors in CapitaLand.

Liew sees people as the firm's biggest asset and more important for success than market timing or the location of its properties. When CapitaLand was smaller, he insisted on meeting every potential new management hire before offering them the job.

Current and past employees of CapitaLand say Liew tends to give staff lots of leeway to run their operations, although he demands regular updates and wants the final say on big projects.

Unlike many of the former bureaucrats who run Singapore's big state-linked companies, Liew is not shy to speak his mind.

From the number two developer in Singapore when he took over the firm, CapitaLand, 40-percent owned by state investor Temasek TEM.UL, now has large operations in Singapore, China and Australia and more than $34 billion in assets.

The group portfolio includes landmark properties such as Ion Orchard and Clarke Quay in Singapore and Raffles City Shanghai in China.

CapitaLand has not been as savvy in predicting property market cycles compared with rivals such as City Developments (CTDM.SI), Singapore's No. 2 developer, analysts say.

CapitaLand paid a record price to buy land near Singapore's prime Orchard Road shopping belt in June 2007 at the top of the property market boom, which subsequently led to a writedown.

LAYOFFS "MORALLY WRONG"

Shortly after DBS (DBSM.SI), Singapore's largest bank and another Temasek-linked company, sacked 900 staff at the height of the financial crisis last year, Liew said retrenchments were "morally wrong" and should be implemented only if the firm's survival was threatened.

He instead cut salaries at CapitaLand except for the lowest paid, taking the biggest hit of a 20 percent drop himself.

No stranger to high pay during the property market boom, Liew pocketed a bonus of S$20 million ($14 million) in 2007 -- the highest for an executive at a Singapore-listed company.

When the financial crisis hurt mall tenants and crimped CapitaLand's ability to pay bonuses, Liew doled out vouchers to spend at the firm's shopping centers, helping keep his staff and tenants happy.

Liew co-owned a Japanese restaurant on Singapore's riverside Clarke Quay.

With Asia's property markets recovering, CapitaLand reversed the staff pay cuts earlier this month.

Liew is now positioning CapitaLand to grow its Asian shopping mall business through CapitaMalls, finding new opportunities in Vietnam and expanding its Ascott serviced residences business.

($1 =1.385 Singapore Dollar)

(Editing by Neil Chatterjee and Anshuman Daga)