A business school of hard knocks ©Cedric Arnold Upward trajectory: Serge Pun has become one of Myanmar's most important businessmen On meeting Serge Pun in his office in central Yangon, it is hard to imagine that one of Myanmar's most successful tycoons was once a penniless migrant in Hong Kong, delivering ship supplies from a small sampan and selling air sanitisers for a pitiful commission. Clad in traditional garb of collarless white shirt and longyi, or sarong, Mr Pun puffs on a cigar as he recalls: "I had just HK$5 when I arrived in 1973, it was all I had in the world. I was 20, I was fit, and I knew I had to survive. Negotiating difficult circumstances is something Mr Pun, a Myanmar-born ethnic Chinese, has done throughout his life. Just eight years before landing in Hong Kong, he was uprooted from a comfortable, middle-class life in Yangon by the socialist coup of 1962. Amid a backlash against foreign residents and businesses, the family moved to Beijing - only to be caught up nine months later in the Cultural Revolution. The Monday Interview The 12-year-old Mr Pun was separated from his parents and four siblings, corralled into a Red Guard work unit and sent with 1,500 other children for "re-education" to the remote Yunnan province. "For four years, we built a dam with our bare hands," he says. We lived in huts we built from bamboo and constructed beds from branches. We had no electricity and bathed in a stream - even in winter. We were given the bare staple, rice, and the rest was up to us. If your battalion was good, planting vegetables and raising pigs, you could eat meat. Otherwise, it was dried vegetables - they tasted horrible. Today, he runs a sprawling empire of more than 32 companies grouped under Serge Pun & Associates, which includes interests in banking, property development, agribusiness, medical services and vehicle distribution. Mr Pun also runs one of Myanmar's only internationally listed companies: the Singapore-listed Yoma Strategic, which has a market capitalisation of about SD$380m. His latest venture, launched this week, is an air shuttle service between Yangon and Naypyidaw, the new capital. Mr Pun says real valuations of his group are complicated due to a lack of international benchmarks in Myanmar. Much of the group's fortunes lie in lucrative land development rights over some 1,600 acres of property in Yangon, whose value is rising quickly amid growing investor interest in the country and moves to reform property ownership laws. "Anyway," he says, "I hope people don't judge me by how much I'm worth financially - in this situation it's so relative it renders itself rather irrelevant." More relevant, perhaps, is the way Mr Pun is increasingly portrayed as Myanmar's "Mr Clean," a rare model of success and internationalisation in a country known for corruption under decades of harsh military rule. Now, under the reformist regime, he is regularly consulted on matters affecting business, while visiting foreign executives seek his advice or co-operation. He rarely talks about his own life but when he does, he speaks candidly about a remarkable journey. "I had no education, no papers, no qualifications," he says. I spoke Mandarin, Burmese and not much English - and I knew virtually no one apart from distant relatives I was staying with. The only thing I felt I could do well was become a salesman. As a battalion commander in the re-education camp, I felt I had done a good job of selling the ideology. He saw a job ad for a salesman, which turned out to be for air sanitisers. Within a month, he was the company's star salesman. The job led to another, this time selling real estate. Mr Pun had found his forte. "I was lucky," he admits. I worked for a German entrepreneur, Elmar Busch ... who took me under his wing and taught me everything. In 1983, Mr Pun set up Serge Pun & Associates Group of Companies, to focus on property. His Chinese connections helped him land lucrative projects - initially in Hong Kong and later, across the region. But Mr Pun could not shake the memories of Myanmar. I'd kept thinking about it and wanted to go back ... when I visited in 1989, I was astounded by the acute need for investment; I felt a strange but strong desire, like a moral obligation, to do something for this country I had known as prosperous and beautiful ... it had become so run down, so destitute. Mr Pun returned to Yangon in 1991 and opened businesses in financial services, agribusiness and property. The timing was good: a foreign investment act had just been introduced, he obtained a bank licence in 1993 and set up Yoma Bank, the country's second private bank. "The business just kept growing," he recalls. From the mid-2000s, however, he says the rise of cronyism under the military junta left those who "refused to play the game" in the cold. Those were my worst years. There were forces who wanted to take over my businesses, many who would have liked to get rid of me. We kept our heads low and continued to do our business; 2008-09 was the height of the crony regime, unless you played their game you were outcast. Not only that ... they could have ruined me. The political currents began shifting in 2010 as an election was announced. For Mr Pun, the oft-asked question is how he managed to keep rising while steering clear of corruption. It elicits a vehement response. People forget I was outcast for six years. I never paid a cent for any favours ... The pressure was huge but I can say honestly: I have never received a sweetheart deal. We landed deals that needed performance - and we delivered, every time, the right way and in right time. He also benefited from good luck and savvy. Most of the group's land development rights for lucrative Yangon tracts had been purchased in the 1990s. "And nearly all our businesses - the bank, the golf course, property sales - rely chiefly on the consumer, not the government," he says. Numerous interviews with those who have done business with Mr Pun have yielded no suggestion of dubious practices. Serge is tough - you offer him a slice of bread and he'll take the loaf. But he's clean," says one Yangon-based businessman. Underpinning Mr Pun's business philosophy are the lessons from his "re-education" camp experience. "Not only do I not regret the hardships I went through in China, I actually treasure them," he says. Because whatever I learnt and endured over those years laid the foundation for what I achieved in my later years. Those hardships also left him with his most important friendships. I actually have lots of good memories; there might be no common interests but there is ... a deep and strange bond that develops between people who have shared extreme experiences. The experiences taught him to value what others might take for granted. Because of that continuous fight for survival in those years - both physically and politically - I learnt how to look beyond the surface, to understand people's actions and motives ... I developed a much sharper sense of analysing political whims and anticipating changes. Judging by the steady rise in the stock price of Mr Pun's Singapore-listed YSH, many of Mr Pun's shareholders approve of his approach. As one international investor, Jim Rogers, puts it: "Serge Pun knows the country, he knows what is going on ... unless he gets thrown out, he should be able to carry on regardless, and make money for himself and his shareholders." If his own history of survival is anything to go by, few will bet against him.