Taipan's tale of progress

CAI MENG/CHINA DAILY

Swire Pacific chairman brings three decades of experience to a diverse and growing business seeking new pastures in China

On a sunny Monday morning, John Slosar, chairman of Swire Pacific, sits in a bright and spacious room at the Opposite House, a luxury boutique hotel in the bustling Sanlitun area of Beijing.

In the top-floor suite of the Swire-owned hotel, Slosar, 58, takes a moment out of his busy day to share his vision for the diversified conglomerate as it enters its 150th year on the Chinese mainland.

Pondering Swire's corporate motto－the Latin phrase Esse Quam Videri, meaning "to be, rather than to seem to be"－he says: "This expresses the core ethics of Swire Group pretty well.

"We want to do and we like doing real businesses that deliver the real value. It's important to consumers and other businesses."

Although Swire was founded in the United Kingdom and remains headquartered in London, it is a name indelibly associated with Asia, and with Hong Kong in particular.

Among its core businesses is Cathay Pacific, the Hong Kong-based airline regularly named as one of the world's best. Swire also owns several major mixed-use developments in the special administrative region, including the Pacific Place high-end mall and office buildings.

Highlighting the diversity of the company's portfolio is one of Swire's most well-known products in Asia－its brand of cube sugar, Taikoo.

Besides property, airlines and other aviation interests, Swire is invested in a Coca-Cola bottling business and a range of trade and offshore industries. With many of these ventures in its portfolio for decades, it is eyeing even more growth.

"Although we have been around for a very long time, it is not like we have very old businesses, but businesses with a lot of growth," says Slosar, who became the Taipan, as the Swire chairman is known, in March.

Slosar's role involves being the head of Cathay Pacific Airways, Swire Pacific, Swire Properties, John Swire & Sons (Hong Kong), and the Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company.

Laying out his vision for the company, Slosar says Swire continues to seek new investment opportunities.

"If something new and interesting presented itself that we thought we could add value to, we would love to try new things in China," he says, citing Swire's recently opened cold storage facilities in Shanghai and Langfang in Hebei province as examples.

"There will be a market in the future for high-quality cold storage, which is good for food quality. It means you can transport food to a greater distance, keep it refrigerated, and have it stay fresher when it arrives at people's plates."

Slosar expects to open up to six more cold storage facilities in the next three years, making Swire a leader in China in this particular field.

Maintaining such a diversified portfolio is not easy, he says, adding that the key is independence.

"Let all the businesses run pretty much independently," he says. "Each business has its own chief executive, its own management team and they are responsible for developing their businesses. We don't try to run all these businesses from the center as one unit, giving the management teams room to play and develop."

Swire has its own talent search and cultivation system. Almost all of its management team is developed internally. Every year, the company hires between 20 and 30 university graduates, trains and assigns them to different positions in various businesses and locations, under the tutelage of strong managers.

Employees are then rotated through various businesses and positions so they can learn a variety of skills.

"Then they tend to spend quite a long time in Swire because they have a very strong feeling of Swire's culture," says Slosar. "And the key point of Swire's culture is that we always try to do things in a good and high-quality way."

Slosar got his start with Swire as a management trainee in 1980. The graduate from Cleveland, Ohio was fresh from receiving degrees in economics from two prestigious universities, Columbia in New York and Cambridge in the UK.