Business

Saturday October 10, 2009

Up Close and Personal with Dr Andrew Freris

By YEOW POOI LING


DR Andrew Freris unabashedly admits that he’s in the corporate world for the money.

The former academician joined the financial sector in 1990 after teaching for 22 years in Britain as well as in Hong Kong.

“It was the beginning of the rapid development of the financial sector and it’s very clear to me that if I want to make more money, I shouldn’t be teaching. I should become an investment banker and that’s why I changed,” he told StarBizWeek in a recent interview.

“It’s a good trade-off – I lost several weeks of vacation and gained more zeros to my salary,” he laughs.

Freris is a pragmatic when it comes to money.

“Money isn’t everything but money is 99.99% of everything. People tell you that money doesn’t make happiness, but it does buy some very acceptable substitutes,” he says.

He and his wife love music and run the Chopin Society of Hong Kong whose activities encompass the organisation of private and public music concerts not only in Hong Kong but in Asia and now in Latin America.

In 2006, the Chopin Society launched its own recording label, the Alpha Omega Sound which will be releasing a varied and unusual series of archival CDs, remastered at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London, as well as recordings made specifically for its label.

Freris, who has lived in Hong Kong since 1985, holds degrees from the London School of Economics. He was principal lecturer at London Metropolitan University from 1968-1984, and from 1985 to 1990, he was the head of Economics and Finance Department at the City University of Hong Kong.

During his academic years, he wrote as well as co-authored numerous books and articles like The Financial Markets of Hong Kong (1991), The Greek Economy in the Twentieth Century (1986) and The Soviet Industrial Enterprise: Theory and Practice (1984).

“I wrote a lot of books as an academic, which is different from other circumstances, as they were meant to be explored and not expected to have a long shelflife,” he says.

However, when it comes to the choice of books he enjoys, Freris is sceptical over wealth-related books.

“I don’t buy books that talk about how to become a millionaire. If the author knows how to become a millionaire, why does he want to tell me?” he says, adding that if a million copies of the book had been sold, that means a million people already knew how to become a millionaire.

“You know how people become a millionaire? You write a book that talks about it, sell a million copies and then you’ll become a millionaire. It sounds like a ponzi scheme to me,” Freris says.

Besides, the books do not offer new insights as advice like buy cheap, sell high or assess the risks carefully before investing are textbook old principles, he adds.

Freris’ corporate profile in almost two decades has been extensive. He started as director, senior economist with GT Asia Ltd (1990-1993), before joining Salomon Brothers as director and chief regional economist for Asia (1993-1997).

In 1997, he moved to Bank of America as managing director of Asia Research. Three years later, he joined BNP Paribas as chief economist for Asia-Pacific for the fixed income and treasury group before taking up his current position as senior investment strategist, Asia for wealth management.

In both his academic and corporate years, he has given talks at various international and regional seminars and conferences.

Considering his economics background, Freris views work as a form of transaction, in that companies pay employees a remuneration package in return for their services, skills and knowledge.

“I’m a professional who sells a service. I’m paid because the company feels it’s getting some value for money. It’s a dignified transaction,” he says.

He doesn’t think it’s of any importance if one enjoys his work or not.

“It’s not a matter of liking or disliking one’s job. People do their jobs because they’re paid to do the job. It’s the honourable thing to do, to do my best because that’s why they’re paying me,” he says.

To Freris, free services do not make sense, especially in terms of value “because people would only pay for something if they can get some form of value.”

Talking about the current economic downturn, Freris says it’s a misconception that there is a lesson to be learnt from every crisis because every bust is distinct in its own.

“This crisis started with banks in the US extending their loans to the property sector. So don’t lend unwisely to the property sector – don’t lend to people who potentially can’t repay, or lend 100% on overpriced property, or shouldn’t leverage enormously to lend. But are these new lessons?” he says.

“It’s like saying, don’t go in the rain because you’ll get wet. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” he adds.

The dot com crisis in 2000/2001, in contrast, was due to unwise expectations on the Internet and telecommunications, and had nothing to do with property.

“There was no lesson from 2000/2001 that is applicable in the current crisis,” Freris points out.

Moreover, the Asian currency crisis was limited to certain countries like Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea, which impacted Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan but India, the Philippines and China did not face any currency issues.

“The root cause of the Asian crisis did not offer any lessons. The countries borrowed enormously externally and they lent the money to the property sector and due to their exchange rate regimes, it created chaos in their financial system,” he says.

The Asian crisis did not affect European or the US economies. Similarly, the subprime mortgage debacle in the US had little impact on Asian countries because banks in Asia owned very little American assets and they didn’t lend extensively like the Americans, he adds.

Having lived in this region, Freris says it’s important not to perceive or “blanket” Asia with a one-size-fits-all type of view as the countries have very distinctive histories, cultures and languages.

Freris instead prefers to draw on the different dynamics instead of trying to summarise the region as one entity because “what drives India are different from what drives Thailand.”

“Some economies have huge exposure to agriculture like Thailand, Indonesia and India while countries like Singapore and Hong Kong do not. If something happens to the agricultural sector in India, it will impact the economy significantly but it will not have the same effect on Singapore or Hong Kong,” he says.

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