Latest / Whisky Unfinished / 20 Years Around Bankers, Billionaires & Presidents | Scoring a Hibiki 21 YO

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20 Years Around Bankers, Billionaires & Presidents | Scoring a Hibiki 21 YO · Whisky Unfinished

• 0:00
  So you've met with all of these different finance ministers, heads of state, presidents of countries.
• 0:06
  What did you take away looking back now?
• 0:08
  The wealth pyramid is very, very narrow.
• 0:10
  So these people right at the top are really superstars.
• 0:13
  I remember one conglomerate, I've been calling them for weeks, and I still couldn't get this damn meeting.
• 0:17
  So eventually I had to say to the secretary, I said, look, I'm now going to call the president when I update this afternoon in the office of who's supporting.
• 0:23
  I'm going to tell them they do not have your support.
• 0:26
  That worked.
• 0:26
  15 minutes later, the guy himself called me back.
• 0:30
  We'll treat today like a bit of an educational tour around Scotland and a little bit of Japan.
• 0:36
  So we're starting in Japan.
• 0:37
  This is a 21-year-old hibiki.
• 0:40
  You had a pretty amazing career, banking, bankers, finance, events, news for 26 years.
• 0:47
  My senior that were big billionaires, industrialists, bankers, really eye-opening.
• 0:52
  This is the Dalmore Cigar Mall.
• 0:55
  You might not know, but the world's largest feral camel population is where?
• 0:59
  It's Australia.
• 1:00
  What? Don't drink the milk.
• 1:02
  So this is a Beaumont 15-year-old cherry finish.
• 1:05
  If Australia wants to be part of our world, you should get off your island and push it closer.
• 1:10
  In the sense that, like, it's just way too far.
• 1:13
  Oban 14.
• 1:14
  You haven't heard a koala mating call then?
• 1:16
  Have you never heard?
• 1:17
  No, I've not been lucky enough, I guess.
• 1:19
  OK, well, once you have heard, it will stay with you.
• 1:23
  It is a sound from the depths of hell.
• 1:25
  Hey, guys, Rakesh here, the whisky Chief.
• 1:28
  Firstly, thank you so much for watching this.
• 1:29
  I really appreciate it.
• 1:31
  If you could like and subscribe below, it really helps us bring the best whiskies to you and keep doing this show the best we can.
• 1:37
  Thanks.
• 1:38
  Thanks, Paris.
• 1:38
  Thanks for joining.
• 1:39
  Welcome to whisky Unfinished, where the whisky's never finished and neither is the conversation.
• 1:45
  Pleasure having you here today.
• 1:46
  Pleasure to be here, Rakesh.
• 1:47
  So I've known you for 26 years.
• 1:51
  Let's not do the math.
• 1:52
  Yeah, 26 years.
• 1:54
  You've had a pretty amazing career in and around, let's say, banking, bankers, finance, events, news for most of that time.
• 2:05
  So we'll jump into the world of finance, the world of banking and kind of wherever else the conversation takes us.
• 2:12
  But let's start with the first whisky.
• 2:21
  So you're not much of a whisky guy, is that right?
• 2:24
  I am a red wine chap from Australia.
• 2:27
  Guilty as charged.
• 2:28
  And perhaps champagne is my wannabe, you know, predilection.
• 2:32
  But I'm in the hands of an expert.
• 2:34
  OK.
• 2:34
  Well, we'll treat today like a bit of an educational tour around Scotland and a little bit of Japan.
• 2:43
  Please.
• 2:43
  So we're starting in Japan.
• 2:45
  This is a 21-year-old hibiki.
• 2:48
  So this is a blended whisky.
• 2:49
  And I noticed the first thing you were doing was a lot of this.
• 2:52
  So just which is a normal thing that people do, especially those who drink wine.
• 2:57
  But when you drink whisky and you do this a lot, all you're doing actually is moving all the alcohol right to the top.
• 3:03
  A lot of people do this and then they drink whisky and go, fuck, that's really strong.
• 3:07
  Yeah, of course it is, because you just moved 46 percent alcohol right to the top of the glass.
• 3:12
  So some people do swirl it a little bit, usually after you add a couple of drops of water, you might swirl it around a little bit.
• 3:18
  But otherwise, try.
• 3:20
  if you can, not to do that.
• 3:22
  And since you're relatively new to whisky, I'll teach you a little bit how to taste whisky.
• 3:25
  Do it.
• 3:26
  So first, we're just going to get it into the nose, right?
• 3:29
  So we're just going to gently bring it up to your nose a couple of times.
• 3:34
  I was taught how to taste a nose whisky by a guy called Richard Patterson.
• 3:39
  He was the master blender at Dalmore, which is actually the next whisky we're going to have for 50 years.
• 3:44
  He said, approach a whisky like you'd approach a member of the opposite sex for the first time.
• 3:50
  So it's sort of a, hi, how are you?
• 3:53
  This is too early in the chat for a catch.
• 3:55
  Nice to meet you.
• 3:56
  But what you don't want to do is go ahead and stick your whole nose in there, right?
• 4:00
  So you want to kind of treat it a bit gently.
• 4:02
  Now, the first sip that we're going to have, you actually want to, if you can, swish it around the inside of your mouth.
• 4:08
  This is not tasting whisky.
• 4:10
  All we're doing at this point is getting our palate ready to drink whisky, right?
• 4:15
  Because you've maybe had coffee today, you've eaten something, you've drank stuff.
• 4:19
  So there's all kinds of stuff in your palate, right?
• 4:21
  So the first sip, if you can, kind of up to almost eight to 10 seconds.
• 4:31
  Just really swish it around under the tongue, left, right, top of the mouth.
• 4:35
  Again, we're not drinking whisky.
• 4:37
  We're just priming our palate, right?
• 4:39
  This is at 44% alcohol.
• 4:43
  Hibiki, one of the, yeah, you're feeling that?
• 4:45
  44% alcohol, 21-year-old blended whisky.
• 4:50
  Probably the most popular brands in the world, I would say, Yamazaki, Hibiki, right?
• 4:55
  So now we're going in for actually tasting the whisky.
• 5:01
  And hopefully what you find is over time, it's getting a little bit easier to drink because now your palate's kind of ready for it.
• 5:08
  And if you wanted to, you could always add a couple of drops of water.
• 5:12
  That also helps to soothe things a little bit.
• 5:15
  All right.
• 5:16
  So there you go.
• 5:16
  I finally put some hair on my chest.
• 5:18
  There you go.
• 5:19
  That's how you're supposed to drink whisky, right?
• 5:20
  So I think the mistake people do often is they just go straight in, right?
• 5:24
  And it's just too much because of everything that's been in your palate.
• 5:27
  So, all right, so that's our first whisky.
• 5:30
  We'll enjoy that for a little while.
• 5:32
  I see you're enjoying it quite well.
• 5:36
  We can get you some more.
• 5:38
  No, no, pause.
• 5:39
  All right.
• 5:41
  So you're currently living in Australia and you're from Australia originally, right?
• 5:46
  So you spent a lot of time there, but then with a long gap, 25-ish years in Asia and then back to Australia, outside of cheating at cricket, what's it like being back in Australia?
• 5:59
  How's that feel being back in Australia after all those years, 25 years away, like living there, I mean?
• 6:04
  Yeah, it is.
• 6:06
  It's interesting.
• 6:07
  You're 100% right.
• 6:08
  I sort of grew up in a little village of Adelaide, which most of my friends up in this part of the world when introduced, they don't necessarily know it off the top of their head.
• 6:15
  Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne.
• 6:17
  It's not that, it's a little place, about a million people, lovely place.
• 6:20
  I left that straight after uni more or less and have been overseas since then.
• 6:25
  And I'm now finding myself back there a little bit more taking care of an aging parent.
• 6:30
  It's been interesting.
• 6:31
  You have this sort of idealized version of your home culture and your home place.
• 6:37
  And then when you get back there, and it's been a bit.
• 6:40
  time kind of appreciating what is and isn't, you start seeing how you've changed in that journey.
• 6:46
  But has the place changed, do you think?
• 6:47
  I'm sure you've changed, but has, like, is your view of Adelaide a different place?
• 6:52
  Adelaide's certainly, Adelaide in Australia has certainly changed.
• 6:58
  It used to be a really sort of sleepy kind of town, and I remember growing up, the tallest building in the city was 32 stories, and it was sort of one giant toothpick by itself.
• 7:08
  There's now three or four buildings that have sprung up, downtown apartments that are taller than that.
• 7:15
  Australia in general has had a continued growth with immigration as a big part of the growth story in Australia.
• 7:20
  Yeah.
• 7:21
  Adelaide is- Well, you started with as a bunch of immigrants, right?
• 7:24
  We did.
• 7:25
  Technically.
• 7:26
  On a leaky boat, yeah, exactly.
• 7:27
  Technically.
• 7:28
  Though Adelaide is the only free settled colony in Australia.
• 7:31
  What does that mean?
• 7:32
  So if we're looking, so that means every other part of Australia- No, no, no, that is absolutely a different story.
• 7:41
  And yes, we are beginning to understand that everywhere did that, and that is something Australia will continue to grapple with.
• 7:47
  But no, it means that when the British settled Australia, they settled that as different territories, each state, Western Australia, Perth, all of that was settled with independently reporting back in to London directly.
• 8:00
  Adelaide was the only place that wasn't started as a penal colony.
• 8:02
  So everywhere else began with prisoners and prison guards.
• 8:05
  There often wasn't that much difference being shipped out.
• 8:08
  Adelaide's very minor claim to fame is that everyone at some level chose to move there.
• 8:13
  Now, you're six months in a leaky boat, you might've been running away from your first wife, your second wife, somebody had done the dirty on with a business deal.
• 8:19
  There's a myriad bunch of reasons, but Adelaide was a free settled colony.
• 8:24
  So hard as it might be to believe, the Queen's English in Adelaide is a little bit more refined than some other parts.
• 8:32
  Where the civilized ancestors, let's say.
• 8:36
  That comes in wearing shoes, but yeah, it's slightly more civilized.
• 8:40
  And then when Australia became a federation, a country in 1901, super recently, then it was sort of subsumed into the greater, what then became Australia from the individual colonies.
• 8:51
  But Adelaide is a city of a million people, beautiful place, great lifestyle.
• 8:54
  A lot of people that have been priced out of Sydney and Melbourne, both Australians and immigrants have settled on Adelaide as a great sort of compromised position.
• 9:03
  You can get the same lifestyle for probably half the cost of what it's going to be in Sydney and Melbourne these days.
• 9:09
  Yeah. And that's what, when I think of Australia, I think of lifestyle, right?
• 9:12
  I mean, I've been to Sydney, I've been to Melbourne, people who move there generally and the people, it's just a better, I think arguably people would say it's a better style of life or, you know, just things are a little bit easier there.
• 9:26
  But it's a lucky country for a reason.
• 9:28
  It's a very fortunate place.
• 9:31
  The more time you sort of spend crossing cultures, you can maybe put that fortunateness in a bit of a context. Certainly Hong Kong.
• 9:37
  I mean, it's almost chalk and cheese in terms of the geography and the living life here in Hong Kong versus Adelaide.
• 9:43
  The compromise or the question mark around Australia is more on the financial side of things, the work side of things and how you sort of make peace with that or find that rhythm. Certainly in a place like Adelaide, which even by Australia standards is not head office kind of place.
• 9:58
  Yeah, it's a bit more.
• 10:00
  There was a comedian, I don't know, a long time ago that made a joke that I always liked, which was, you know, if Australia wants to be part of our world, you should get off your island and push it closer.
• 10:12
  In the sense that, like, it's just way too far.
• 10:15
  Like, I mean, it's just 10 hours.
• 10:16
  There's no chance.
• 10:17
  Australia is quite happy being what it is, isolated.
• 10:20
  Outside of New Zealand, right, the closest, I think, is Bali, right, from Sydney or Melbourne, which is, what, 8, 10 hours.
• 10:28
  It's a pretty far place to get to for the rest of the world.
• 10:30
  But when I was there, at least, I felt like people enjoyed the fact that they were kind of removed from the world and kind of reveled in, you know, if you're in Australia, it's very Australia-focused.
• 10:41
  Is that what you're experiencing or has that changed at all?
• 10:44
  Are people more, I guess, globally-minded or give a shit about things happening outside of Australia or not quite?
• 10:52
  If you're in Australia, it's about Australia.
• 10:54
  That's what we care about.
• 10:56
  It probably breaks down in a couple of groups.
• 10:58
  I'd say the average culture is still quite happy to celebrate the fact that they are Australia and very much the arse end of the world, as it's been referred to.
• 11:04
  You know, it is a long way from everything, and most of the time, that is for the better.
• 11:09
  Probably more so in a place like Sydney or Melbourne on the East Coast, it is quite cosmopolitan.
• 11:13
  One of the joys of Australia is, I think the stats are something like 50% of people have a parent born outside of Australia.
• 11:20
  So that means that the cuisine, the types of foods- Where in Sydney, you mean?
• 11:24
  All over Australia.
• 11:26
  In terms of the numbers, it is extremely immigrant-driven.
• 11:30
  Very similar to Hong Kong on a different basis, but that brings a lot of joy.
• 11:33
  Yeah, people don't realize how international that is.
• 11:36
  So Australia, of course, has a dialogue about, and each lifetime, I think there's always concerns about whether the most recent new arrivals are going to blend in or not, and there's different waves over that.
• 11:45
  But the reality is, it is a very colorful, multicultural society that more or less works, and probably by the basis of those cultures globally, is one of the most healthy, I think, kind of cultures that has worked out how to blend people in over time.
• 12:00
  It does take time, but you get the joys of the food, great produce, the wines, the rest of it, the living standards.
• 12:08
  This is a good promotion for you to become head of tourism for the Australia board of wherever you're going to try to work for and act.
• 12:16
  How's it going in terms of, I was watching the Australian Open on Sunday, was the men's final, and at the end when they did the trophy presentation, the guy who was doing the trophy presentation, ANZ or whatever company, started with, and we'd like to start by first thanking the ancestors of this land.
• 12:40
  So to me, you hear that kind of stuff in the US now, where people are trying to pay more homage to the actual ancestors of that.
• 12:49
  Is this a woke trend that you've seen in Australia?
• 12:53
  Is it going too far?
• 12:54
  Is there a backlash against immigration like we're seeing in the United States?
• 12:58
  You're talking about immigration being such a big part of Australia.
• 13:02
  Is it really welcomed there?
• 13:03
  The way we're seeing in most other parts of the world, there's a big pushback against immigration now.
• 13:09
  So they're two very different things.
• 13:11
  The First Nation Aboriginal Australia dialogue, this is probably Australia's biggest and open question mark, that it hasn't found a solution for.
• 13:20
  yet. I look back at when I clearly remember when I did Australian studies in grade 10 last century, I remember I think it was about a 12-week course, we covered Aboriginal history I think in the first two weeks and the last 10 weeks was from sort of Captain Cook onwards. Australia's come a long way from there, but still I've never had the privilege of going to school with somebody who's a First Nations at any of my levels or going to university, they represent I believe something like 1% of the population, whereas you look at places like New Zealand which has had much more success with its Maori population, they're a much larger percentage of it. And more integrated I feel like into society, like it's a big bigger part, at least when I visited Auckland and North Island, like I felt you could feel their presence, versus when I go to Australia I don't really feel it, unless you go out looking for it. And that's, you know, they're 25-ish percent I think still of the population, so they're just practically, and like anything, any human, if you had the chance to know somebody person to person, you know, you get the chance to experience them as an individual, you're not reading about it from a stereotype from the news or social media or whatever. So Australia has a much smaller percentage of First Nations. There's also I think one of the really tricky parts of that dialogue is that my understanding of the First Nations is just that multiple different nations in multiple different parts all over Australia, the relationship to land is central to the identity, and I think everywhere has found it very very difficult to put development into rural areas. Isn't that the one thing you have in Australia is land? Like most of Australia is not habited, right? Isn't that still the case?
• 14:57
  Like a large majority of it there's no people. 100 percent, but it's very difficult to get, you know, with the exception of places like mining where you find a resource to extract, which doesn't tend to be very job heavy in terms of, and they're very technical jobs in that, so you've got big parts of Western Australia, particularly the Pilbara, that have resources mining under the ground. You might not know, but the world's largest feral camel population is where? It's Australia. We've got millions and millions of camels that just wander around Australia. What? You wouldn't know that. We've got big issues with... Don't drink the milk. We had a guest on, we had a guest on a couple episodes ago who was in, somewhere in Saudi or whatever, and he was at this party late night and like someone's house or whatever, and they had camels, and they were serving the chamomile, unpasteurized chamomile, and he had a whole bowl of it and ended up in ICU twice in the next two days as a result. So here's a nice little warning for you. Note to the wise. Don't drink the milk. I had no idea there were that many camels. Millions of them, right? Because they came out when they're exploring Australia, the horses wouldn't last, so they brought out camels from the Middle East. And the very early folks that came out with the Brits were actually a lot of Afghan cameliers, and then they let the camels go at the end, and the camels are like, great, let's go and populate, and they still are. They've got to fly around in helicopters trying to shoot these things, and it's a losing battle. So I think one of the things... Not to control the population, you mean? Yeah, you can't.
• 16:23
  I mean, one of the things that I think you appreciate as an Australian is that the man versus nature debate you see at the scale of Australia, which is impossible to comprehend until you've lived it, that we're not in a position to dominate land. It's impossible even just getting into Australia, right?
• 16:40
  This is by far the strictest airport I've ever been to in terms of anything that you bring what you can't bring in Anything like there's nothing from that that could I guess be from outside that ecosystem. I could completely Well, these are billions of dollars conversations, right?
• 16:55
  So if they can keep a bunch of the diseases out for our agriculture, which Australia is world-class at these are worth billions Yeah, and the power that those folks have and some of like the agricultural and fisheries people. They have more power than the police Yeah, so that's they're really respected members of society The First Nations, I don't have the answer. I know a lot of energy and money has gone on it We are on a journey that's getting better. It's still got a long way to go Our immigrant conversation I think is a different conversation that again is getting over time. It's improving I think the big issue we have at the moment in Australia is not just Australia is a cost of living which is access to housing yeah, and then the tax base and making sure that at the moment, we've got a largely income based tax system and we have top marginal tax rates 47 48 percent plus GST plus, you know, we've got to move to a Wealth based tax system. Yeah, that's kind of the debate happening in maybe not the debate But some of the challenge is happening in the UK as well, right?
• 17:53
  It's not not wealth based, but it's income based. But do you actually see that?
• 17:56
  I was having a conversation with someone about this last night. Do you actually see that changing?
• 18:01
  It has to change the math of it So there was something released by Oxfam in Australia lead up to the World Economic Forum a couple of weeks ago The richest 18 Australians have as much wealth as the bottom 40% of Australian 18 1 8 1 8 18 individuals how many of them do you know none?
• 18:18
  How do we get to know them and do any of them like whisky? That's my question Yes, they do a bunch of them work for Canva and mining so we've had some really good tech startups that have gone global, but that that is the worst ratio since the 70s and You know with the world's globalized movement of where people live and has changed fundamentally obviously We're still stuck in a nation-state system It's not just Australia facing this but the tax contribution and working out how to tax those individuals and the company assets They represent is I think the real story of the next little while at the moment We're in Australia and elsewhere probably having a go at blaming immigrants That will go for a while you to blame something then try to fix the problem I was having this conversation someone last night who was saying that they think the only We're talking about the UK system, which is beyond messed up I would say most people would agree the UK is not in a good spot right right now And he was saying that the only thing that's really gonna change it is war That's the only real thing that historically speaking has made such a drastic Change to a system because you need a war in order to shock the system to then actually change But this kind of very small progressive reform just doesn't work. It just doesn't happen Traditionally, yes They're the to redistribute wealth fundamentally has required an upheaval like that There's also the the sort of saying of shirt back to shirt back in three generations, which was a way the wealth got redistributed That doesn't happen as much now as there's a much stronger ecosystem advisors and planners and supporters Around and we'll probably get into some of the other parts of my career. You support that so I think everyone of knows at the margins that that's the worst case scenario, it's an open question of whether we can find a better way to do that.
• 20:06
  What's interesting about Australia, Craig, if I'm wrong, you're required to vote, is that right?
• 20:12
  Compulsory voting.
• 20:13
  Is that the only country in the world that requires, and this, what I was learning, even if you're an Australian abroad, is that the case?
• 20:21
  Once you've been off the electoral roll, once you've been out of Australia for a year, it's no longer compulsory.
• 20:25
  Okay, but everyone who's in Australia must vote, and what happens if you don't vote?
• 20:29
  You'll get a fine.
• 20:30
  I find that kind of crazy.
• 20:32
  Pros and cons, pros and cons.
• 20:34
  So you're making sure that whatever is being voted, let's say true democracy being everyone has a say, has a voice.
• 20:43
  But in this case, it's a forced voice, even if I don't have an opinion, I'm going to randomly select things.
• 20:51
  Isn't there a large percentage of votes that I would say, well, this person is not really qualified to be making, to have an opinion on these things.
• 20:58
  You can go in there and put a dick in a bowl on the voting paper if you want, right?
• 21:02
  Like there is no, you don't have to.
• 21:03
  And you have.
• 21:04
  I've been away for most of my plus 18 years, but you have to go to the polling booth and check off your name.
• 21:11
  You've got to go get the ballot paper.
• 21:12
  What you then do, you can submit an illegible vote.
• 21:16
  We do have, and just in the last couple of weeks, actually, the two party system we've had in Australia.
• 21:20
  So we have more a UK system of parliamentary democracy.
• 21:23
  So it's not a direct vote like the Americans have.
• 21:25
  Traditionally, it's been liberal and Labour.
• 21:28
  We have had in the new modern world of internet and people having a direct voice.
• 21:32
  Did you just call the internet the modern world?
• 21:35
  So politics is a bit like doctors and lawyers.
• 21:37
  We're still playing a little bit of catch up here of things that have happened 30 odd years ago.
• 21:41
  But there's just been Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party, which has typically had a stronger, more right view, particularly on immigration.
• 21:49
  The latest polling shows that they might have just pulled ahead of the liberals who have really struggled to blend their rural constituency with their urban constituency and climate change in their energy policy has been front and center of that.
• 22:02
  It's kind of really been difficult and sort of pulled them to pieces.
• 22:05
  But Australia is also undergoing a fundamental kind of change in its political structure.
• 22:12
  But because of compulsory voting, part of what the data seems to suggest is it does sort of give a bit of inertia to this because everyone's going to go to the booths, everyone's going to vote, and people typically stick with what they voted for, what their parents voted for.
• 22:27
  But it is undergoing a point of change.
• 22:30
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 22:31
  All right.
• 22:32
  Well, let's move on to whisky number two.
• 22:40
  I'm going to go to the bottom here.
• 22:42
  So I would suggest same, same, which is, you know, get your...
• 22:46
  Approach it like a lovely lady, right?
• 22:48
  Get your nose in there, but not too far.
• 22:51
  Easier said than done.
• 22:52
  Your nose isn't as big as some, Rakesh.
• 22:55
  So this is the, speaking of nose, this is the Dalmore Cigar Malt, which was created by Richard Patterson.
• 23:05
  In the industry, his nickname is The Nose.
• 23:08
  So it's Richard The Nose Patterson.
• 23:10
  He does have a relatively large nose, but he also is considered by many to be one of the best master blenders of our lifetime.
• 23:20
  maybe of ever in history of making scotch.
• 23:22
  So he's been the master blender at Dalmore for over 50 years.
• 23:26
  He's a big cigar smoker.
• 23:27
  I was gonna say, so where does the cigar come in?
• 23:29
  Yeah, so he's a big cigar smoker, and there's actually never, you know, a lot of people think of whisky and cigars kind of going together, but never had anyone created a whisky specifically to have paired with a cigar.
• 23:41
  So that's what he created, and this is the Cigar Mole.
• 23:45
  So for me, this one's got a lot more, how would I say this?
• 23:50
  A lot more earthiness.
• 23:51
  It's a lot more heavier than the Hibiki, if that makes sense.
• 23:54
  So the Hibiki, which I should have done that, we do a scale here, so a quick scoring system.
• 24:00
  So one is Utter Scheidt, 10 is Scottish Freedom, right?
• 24:05
  So on that scale, so the Hibiki 21-year-old blended whisky for me was a solid 7.5, just really nice, easy to drink.
• 24:18
  It's actually my wife's favorite whisky, Hibiki 21.
• 24:20
  You know my wife, she loves Hibiki 21, so she's a little jealous we're drinking that without her, but I would put that as a 7.5.
• 24:27
  For me, the Dalmore Cigar Mole, it's a lot earthier.
• 24:30
  It's a lot heavier, which is the style.
• 24:33
  It's what it's meant to be, right?
• 24:34
  Because you could imagine, and we're not smoking cigars now, but you could imagine the heaviness of the smoke.
• 24:41
  Kind of you need something quite punchy to stick up to that, right?
• 24:44
  If you had a very light whisky, you just really wouldn't taste it at all, right?
• 24:48
  But with the cigar, I think this is a solid 6.5.
• 24:53
  Interesting, so as a novice, I found, and maybe it's because my first one, I found the first one was a little more burny, if that's a word.
• 25:01
  I find this one much easier to sort of drink.
• 25:05
  That makes sense from the point of view that your palate is now getting used to, you know?
• 25:10
  And yeah, try it with a couple of drops of water.
• 25:12
  I think it kind of helps.
• 25:13
  What's the science behind how many drops?
• 25:15
  Is there one?
• 25:16
  Yeah, two or three drops is kind of probably enough.
• 25:19
  And the main thing with adding water is you can't take it out.
• 25:22
  So my advice is add one or two drops, see if you like it.
• 25:26
  If you still want to add more, you can keep adding more until you get it to where you like.
• 25:31
  But if you added 10 drops, then it'd probably just be too diluted and you can't take the water out, right?
• 25:37
  How much do you drink like this at room temperature versus with ice?
• 25:40
  Or am I being, again, showing my noviceness?
• 25:42
  No, no, it's a great question.
• 25:43
  So I think I have a very biased view on this.
• 25:46
  I think you should have whisky however you like your whisky.
• 25:49
  So I think a lot of people will try to tell you ice, no ice, this temperature, that temperature.
• 25:54
  I think everyone's palate is just so different because you grew up eating very different foods, probably, I didn't eat wombats and koalas and meat.
• 26:04
  We're the only country that eats both of our animals on our national emblem.
• 26:07
  So we eat the kangaroos and we eat the emus.
• 26:10
  Is that true?
• 26:11
  And we would eat the camels if we could get them killed from the helicopter to a refrigeration quickly enough, but we can't, so no wombats.
• 26:19
  I'm not aware of anyone that eats wombats.
• 26:20
  Okay, koalas, spiders, no?
• 26:24
  Koalas, yes, if we could segue on to koalas.
• 26:28
  Yeah, I won't go down that route.
• 26:29
  What do you want to say about koalas?
• 26:30
  The world's cutest ever animal.
• 26:33
  It's the only reason it's alive.
• 26:35
  You haven't heard a koala mating call then?
• 26:37
  Have you never heard?
• 26:38
  No, I've not been lucky enough, I guess.
• 26:40
  Okay, well once you once you have heard it will stay with you It is a sound from the depths of hell that comes out of that cute little bear and you'll be astounded that An animal like that can make such a yeah It is really a clearly doesn't want as a country as a piece of land as nature yours I know it doesn't want humans anywhere near it. I mean, you've got some of the deadliest spiders in the world Seven out of ten. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah deadly snakes. Yeah It's it's just trying to tell you to just leave the land alone, but no Australians just won't listen He says I've had too much beer. Yeah. Well with that again a bit of the robustness we have We've got a bit of a new ish problem with sharks. We had about four people taken last week. We shot last week. Yeah, so that's We've had a very successful program of not killing them over the last couple of decades. And of course, there's a lot of sharks There's a lot of sharks. Yeah I'll tell you not to live there, but you guys won't listen. Yeah, so yes, we love playing with that tourist So we'll get into maybe hoop snakes and drop bears at some point But yeah There's always a couple of tourists each year that think that they're gonna better than walk across the desert somewhere and don't realize just how Far it is. But yeah, yeah, it's a scare. I think it's yeah, there are parts of Australia that I think are Yeah difficult, let's say at least and it probably isn't gonna be in your home, but it could be in your home So there's definitely spiders in my dad's backyard that kill you if you're not if you're not careful So, you know, yeah, you've got to know which ones and where they're gonna be but you know, you learn that yeah All right Well transitioning away from Australia for a bit chatting about your career as I said you you love bankers Clearly because you've spent most you're not not a banker never a banker You've literally spent most of your career in and around bankers in large settings Publications conferences, that's been a large part of your life, right? Did you choose like so I would say your first Let's say so major job was at euro money. Is that fair to fair to say and it kind of started right before that Right. Yeah, there was a little bit of a detour. I think out of out of uni Who knows what they really want to do at the end of uni? I was a business degree I end up Malaysia briefly selling chocolate of all things, which I clearly worked out was not for me So I think you learn more from your stuff ups than you learn from your successes and then I wanted to get to China So here we're talking 2003. So back really at the beginning of China's and why why did you want to get to China then?
• 29:01
  Because China this is just for context, right?
• 29:03
  This is before the Olympics, which I take the o8 Olympics as kind of China's coming-out party, right?
• 29:09
  Like I remember actually we were probably together somewhere around 2000 when China was yeah accepted to the World Trade Organization Yeah, right and so that was Long long to and some of the stuff. Yeah, just after that. What made what was your draw to China?
• 29:22
  I don't know honestly I mean I was surprising no one ever knew I was a bit of a talkative shit during my primary school years And so I remember grade four for teacher Got sick of me, you know, just nattering on at class So she gave me a voluntary project if you know go do some homework idiot and I chose China for some reason back then So this is a long long time ago. I don't know. I just had found it interesting and fascinating I'd visited Hong Kong to see a really good friend of mine just at the back end of kovat Which I was too young and dumb to realize how stars you mean a SARS. Sorry, just the end of SARS the last The one before and I was at the time literally working at cabarets at a chocolate factory and somehow my bosses got wind of the fact that I was planning to go and I thought, you know, come on, don't be crazy.
• 30:03
  It's, it's not a big deal anymore.
• 30:05
  And increasingly it got more of an issue.
• 30:07
  So in the end I ended up telling a porky saying, all right, I've canceled plans.
• 30:10
  And then I went to Hong Kong for that weekend.
• 30:12
  Soon as I got back, I was marched straight into the CEO's office and was sent home for two weeks because I didn't understand obviously the implications of one of their employees going to a place with SARS.
• 30:22
  And it was just such a panic across Asia in the end, sanity prevailed and I didn't get in trouble, but I just, you know, Hong Kong has this magic to it.
• 30:30
  There's nowhere, you know, on the planet that has the energy that, that Hong Kong has, and it's changed dramatically in so many different ways.
• 30:40
  And, and, but still there's something about this place.
• 30:43
  And I've been fortunate enough to get to pretty much all of the big cities.
• 30:45
  There's still something about Hong Kong and this energy here that draws you back.
• 30:49
  And I think you asked about the juxtaposition with Australia.
• 30:53
  The old saying of the last thing that the fish knows is the water, you know, I've got used to all my professional career has been here and it's only probably as I've got back to Australia a little bit more and some other places where you notice just how much I do enjoy the energy here.
• 31:06
  There is, yeah, and I grew up here in Hong Kong, right?
• 31:07
  So for me, yeah, it's kind of all I've ever known.
• 31:12
  But I agree there is a resilience to this city too.
• 31:15
  I mean, we've been knocked down quite a few times, whether it's all the way back to SARS, obviously there was the protests, there was, you know, I feel like our COVID here in Hong Kong was longer because it kind of started around the protests where things were, you know, not normal, let's say.
• 31:30
  And we went straight into COVID and the pandemic, which was handled well and then handled terribly. Hong Kong was the last place on earth, I think, that still required masks. Even mainland China had already dropped it and we'd still gone further.
• 31:43
  But you look at Hong Kong today and people are relatively, in 2026, relatively optimistic about Hong Kong.
• 31:49
  Would you agree? What's your view on Hong Kong 2026?
• 31:53
  Do you think it's going to be positive?
• 31:54
  The cultural heart of Hong Kong, as I understand it, is the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the IPO pipeline.
• 32:02
  And that's back a little bit.
• 32:03
  And that's back. We had a brilliant year last year.
• 32:05
  The amount of issuances comes out of Hong Kong.
• 32:07
  These are all mainland Chinese companies that are choosing to list in Hong Kong or even delist from the Nasdaq and relist here.
• 32:14
  Is that mostly what's happening?
• 32:16
  It's not Hong Kong companies.
• 32:18
  It's not Hong Kong companies.
• 32:19
  Those that have wanted have listed.
• 32:21
  It is, you're correct, it's primarily mainland companies.
• 32:23
  And this remains a really unique meeting point where it is trusted enough by the powers that be with our big brother over the border.
• 32:30
  It is also trusted enough by the international capital markets that both of those can come together here. And it's really structurally the only market that has that combination of both.
• 32:44
  The US and listings over there has got politically difficult.
• 32:47
  I think the Alibaba listing and how that went down with a lot of retail investors in America losing their money when that was pulled two weeks after listing and some of the decoupling that is real and genuine that's gone on.
• 32:58
  That gives Hong Kong a unique role.
• 33:02
  And so that's what I think is the heartbeat of this place.
• 33:05
  And I think there was a while there where I think from the mainland China point of view or the Beijing point of view, they were trying to make Shanghai that financial hub. Right. And I think Covid basically just killed I'm not sure it was ever going.
• 33:20
  to happen anyway, but it feels like that was kind of killed.
• 33:22
  Shanghai is not going to be the financial hub that Hong Kong is from a money inflow and IPO point of view.
• 33:30
  And so I feel like that strengthened Hong Kong.
• 33:32
  It's like, OK, I mean, we were always doing that, but now we're that for this part of the world, right?
• 33:38
  And this is it.
• 33:39
  Yeah, and this is where the unique pedigree, the contract law, the British history of contract law, these are big investments that are flying back and forward.
• 33:46
  They need to be bettered down in a legal system that the West at large understands if they're going to put that capital to play.
• 33:52
  Hong Kong has that.
• 33:53
  The PRC system does not.
• 33:55
  That's a big structural kind of benefit that is here.
• 33:58
  You look at places like Singapore that don't have that pedigree, so it makes it more complex.
• 34:03
  And I've spent too much of my career explaining to bosses far, far away about what's happening in Hong Kong.
• 34:08
  And the parable, the story I say is, look, this place, it was a place where pirate ships used to hide amongst the islands to raid the vessels that were going past hundreds of years ago.
• 34:18
  The DNA of Cantonese, the DNA of this harbour port city is really tough and is really global.
• 34:27
  And coming down the Pearl Delta, this place has been built on waves of Chinese immigrants coming out of China proper over the journey.
• 34:37
  That's always going to be the case.
• 34:39
  And they bring with them an amazing work ethic.
• 34:41
  They bring with them a hunger and a need to enrich themselves to build a life.
• 34:47
  And that, anywhere, creates phenomenal reservoir of resilience and grit.
• 34:52
  And Hong Kong is the beneficiary of that.
• 34:54
  And some of the people will find their fortunes and then choose to go elsewhere.
• 34:58
  That's fine.
• 34:59
  But they will continue to be.
• 35:00
  And Hong Kong, I think, I'm really confident that this place will always find a way.
• 35:05
  You're a bit like a cat.
• 35:06
  You can throw it out the window, but there's a way here.
• 35:08
  It will find a way to land on its feet.
• 35:09
  On its feet.
• 35:10
  And so going back, when you first landed here on your feet, tell us about Euromoney.
• 35:15
  What is it?
• 35:16
  What did you do there?
• 35:18
  What was your journey all about?
• 35:19
  You were there, what, about eight, seven, eight years?
• 35:21
  Yeah, a bit longer than that.
• 35:22
  I got really lucky as a wee kid from Adelaide who'd never really left Australia until I got to uni.
• 35:29
  Some pretty simple folks that, you know, dad was a mechanic and mom did a bit of work for the government.
• 35:35
  So I then landed at this Euromoney job where, basically, I got to fly around Asia doing these big foreign investment conferences in different countries and markets around Asia.
• 35:44
  And I remember my first task was to go to the Philippines.
• 35:46
  And within a couple of months, I was tasked to go and get a couple of hundred thousand dollars worth of sponsorship from the good, great, and terrible of the Philippines, a market I'd never visited.
• 35:54
  I had no idea who Jollibee was, or PLDT, or SM Prime, or the Ayala's, or all of this kind of stuff.
• 36:00
  And because I represented what was in probably serious business, serious capital market circles, Euromoney's not known on sort of retail investors on the street.
• 36:09
  But if you were involved in capital markets, it was a brand that was known.
• 36:14
  It's been around 60 years.
• 36:16
  Been around a long time.
• 36:18
  I was lucky that I was a guy and lucky that I was probably an obviously white guy.
• 36:22
  Like, that certainly helped me come in and often be having conversations with people 20, 30 years my senior that were big billionaires, industrialists, bankers, or whatever from those places.
• 36:33
  So it was a really fascinating, privileged chance to go around and see how most of the countries in Asia work.
• 36:40
  at a very senior level, really eye-opening.
• 36:42
  So what was that Philippines first experience like?
• 36:44
  So you get Manila, I assume.
• 36:46
  Yeah, Guerrilla, Manila.
• 36:47
  What's your task and how did it go?
• 36:49
  Well, so first task is, who the hell has money here?
• 36:52
  Who do I need to be talking about, right?
• 36:53
  Who are the big companies?
• 36:54
  Who are the families?
• 36:56
  So I spent a lot of time, and depending on who they were and how their setup was, just a lot of time on the phone.
• 37:02
  I was still sending faxes back then, you know, has and often these more powerful people, you know, they are detached from computers and they have people that filter getting access to them.
• 37:12
  And it was a really humbling experience.
• 37:13
  So sometimes it felt like I was just a secretary spending hours and hours calling the same office of whatever minister or whatever.
• 37:20
  Just trying to get a meeting.
• 37:21
  Just trying to get a meeting.
• 37:21
  Just, first of all, getting my invitation from their desk to that person's desk.
• 37:25
  You know, where is the piece of paper?
• 37:27
  Has it gone?
• 37:28
  Okay, has it moved?
• 37:29
  I will call you again in three hours time.
• 37:31
  Can it move to the next spot?
• 37:33
  And then I would call again.
• 37:33
  And eventually I think they just get sick of me.
• 37:35
  And so I had to sort of badger them.
• 37:37
  Some were great, but you know, you're talking about these places where the wealth pyramid is very, very narrow.
• 37:45
  So these people right at the top are really superstars and big dudes in the case of the Philippines.
• 37:50
  And get badgered all day, every day.
• 37:51
  Get badgered and they got, so yeah.
• 37:53
  So you've got to sort of get your way around and find your way.
• 37:56
  And sometimes it was the carrot.
• 37:57
  Sometimes it was the stick.
• 37:59
  I remember one big Filipino conglomerate, they were named Anonymous.
• 38:03
  We had the president lined up.
• 38:04
  We had it all done.
• 38:05
  I'd been calling them for weeks and I still couldn't get this damn meeting.
• 38:08
  So eventually I had to say to the secretary, I said, look, you know, I'm now going to call the president when I update her this afternoon in the office of who's supporting.
• 38:16
  I'm going to tell them they do not have your support.
• 38:18
  That worked.
• 38:19
  15 minutes later, the guy himself called me back saying, please turn on the sales guy.
• 38:23
  And he said, right, your price has just doubled.
• 38:25
  So I doubled, you know.
• 38:26
  So that was your penalty for being a particularly difficult.
• 38:29
  Yeah.
• 38:30
  But you had to always put the pressure on from one side or another.
• 38:34
  You did.
• 38:35
  It was an art form.
• 38:36
  I was lucky I had a good brand and, you know, we worked often, these conferences would be the biggest foreign investment conferences in those countries that year.
• 38:44
  You'd have the president.
• 38:45
  Was it mostly with, yeah, was it mostly with the president and the government?
• 38:48
  You'd have to.
• 38:49
  Yeah, because it was all about foreign investments.
• 38:51
  In these markets, you know, probably the weirdest in sort of my claim to fame was there was a brief window when Myanmar was open for business.
• 38:59
  This is 2011, 2012.
• 39:01
  And I ended up doing a thousand plus person foreign investor event up in Napidaw with the entire cabinet and all of the good, great and terrible of Myanmar that had just kind of come in from US sanctions and blacklisting.
• 39:13
  And it was really sort of the darling, but that was a phenomenally logistically challenging.
• 39:17
  You know, people had to put on flights, literally for this conference to fly people in from different parts of the world.
• 39:22
  It was front page news, you know, and that was just really exciting and eye-opening for a little chap from Adelaide to do.
• 39:31
  Yeah.
• 39:32
  And did you follow things through to see how much of that foreign investment?
• 39:35
  No, not at all.
• 39:36
  Your job was to make the introductions, open up the possibility.
• 39:41
  We created the stage.
• 39:42
  So we would go out and one of the things you learn pretty quickly and one of the things that was very stressful about this job, that a lot of these long-term, these markets long-term planning for them at a finance minister level, long-term planning might be a week.
• 39:53
  Why?
• 39:54
  Because that's how their schedule works.
• 39:55
  They are not booking things in unless it's an overseas trip.
• 39:58
  They're not booking things in, more than a week or two in advance, then different markets is different, but then off of the day before is when, if you're the finance minister, you book something in your schedule, but if your prime minister says, hey, there's a meeting you need to come to, all of a sudden, you change, right?
• 40:13
  So understanding and trying to work with that, and we would fundamentally, the job was, we'd be going out to the global investor base, say, hey, on XYZ date, six months, a year in advance, we're gonna be doing this in country wide.
• 40:25
  And then I would be the guy that then had to make sure we could actually deliver it when it came to the case.
• 40:31
  And the vast majority of the time, with a bunch of gray hair, I could.
• 40:34
  One spectacular failure in Vietnam, I couldn't.
• 40:37
  What happened there?
• 40:38
  Just the guy just did something different?
• 40:41
  We'd done two really successful when Vietnam was, Vietnam's the rollercoaster of Asia, the way they go up and down.
• 40:46
  We'd done two really great annual events there over two years, phenomenal.
• 40:50
  What had happened happens in these emerging markets.
• 40:53
  They get an influx of foreign capital, doesn't take much in those small markets of big money allocating to them.
• 40:58
  All of a sudden, inflation goes crazy, inflation gone crazy.
• 41:02
  They didn't know how to handle it because they don't have the same levers.
• 41:04
  So you got 40% month on month inflation.
• 41:07
  So they're like, you know, a government minister, particularly in a sort of socialistic kind of economy like Vietnam, if I don't acknowledge the problem, it doesn't exist.
• 41:17
  And so there is me.
• 41:18
  Literally ignoring 40% inflation.
• 41:22
  Well, they don't want to have 1,000 foreign investors fly in who are going to ask, what is your solution?
• 41:28
  When they, you know, they've not, these guys, you know, in a case like Vietnam, some of these guys at that time, you know, they were there at the government because they'd been successful in the army.
• 41:38
  They'd been successful farmers.
• 41:39
  You know, these weren't people that had the opportunity to go to the Kennedy School.
• 41:43
  They weren't used to dealing with Goldman Sachs bankers or BlackRock or whatever.
• 41:47
  So they were discovering how to deal with some really, really sharp global cats that will, you know, be here today because there's money to be made and be gone tomorrow.
• 41:55
  And these guys are in those markets.
• 41:56
  And so there we ended up where everyone was confirmed thousand, million bucks worth of sponsorship.
• 42:03
  All of it was locked in, but we didn't quite have the piece of paper co-signed by a minister level, which technically made it illegal.
• 42:10
  So then I was, I remember being at the Hanoi Hilton, the famous Hanoi Hilton for the Vietnam War stage, going, what do we do?
• 42:15
  Are they going to send the troops to sort of shut down our conference or not?
• 42:19
  And then you've got to make a call of, okay, well, I wasn't so much worried about the company I worked for, but we had some very big global banks that were there and they had operations in country and we couldn't with consciousness say, well, we knew it wasn't quite, you know, and so we made the decision to cancel it.
• 42:35
  And then you've got the added learning experiences.
• 42:38
  Well, then you get blamed by the government.
• 42:40
  Oh, for cancelling.
• 42:41
  For cancelling, you know.
• 42:42
  And then it's your fault that there's no.
• 42:42
  It's your fault, why have you, and so you've got to kind of get the hara-kiri, the sword yourself, and you can't say the truth.
• 42:49
  You can't say, well, this happened because of X, Y, and Z, and we had every president, prime minister, son, daughter, all of the networks in the front and in the back.
• 42:57
  You know, it was a listed company.
• 42:58
  We weren't going to pay any bribes.
• 43:00
  It probably wouldn't have got past that situation anyway, but, you know, to then have, and of course, then once word got out it was cancelled, I had every investment bank and big investment house call me saying, well, what, why?
• 43:11
  What do you know that we don't know?
• 43:12
  And I'm like, oh, should we be worried?
• 43:13
  Should we be pulling out?
• 43:15
  Yeah.
• 43:16
  And I'm here and you're like, well, look, this is just unfortunately a minister who.
• 43:20
  doesn't want this to be happening on stage and so here we are and then a year and a bit went by and then a year later one Friday afternoon I got a again very sort of government speak letter which you know could you possibly investigate now being the right time to maybe consider you know coming back you know which was their version of I'm sorry let's let's do business again yeah so that was really interesting some stuff in the main I'm also very interesting yeah me and my but just to really yeah sounds very fascinating opportunity to learn all right speaking of learning we'll continue on to whisky number three here so we're continuing our journey now into Scotland right so we were starting Japan we did the down war which is a highlands whisky we're now going over to Isla which is on the western Isla part of Scotland over to Beaumont so this is one of my I have to say one of my favorite distilleries so Beaumont on Isla but does a little bit more of a mix between sherry and Pete so generally and there's very generally speaking in Scotland you get whiskies that are more sherry focus right which is kind of like the Dom or I would say more in that sherry camp when you all the big names kind of Macallan Glenlivet Glenfiddich like mostly they do a kind of a sherry style and then you get a smaller group of distilleries Lafroig, Ardbeg etc that do more Petey style whisky we'll try one actually called Oban which is more on the Petey side this is an in-between so this is a Beaumont 15 year old okay sherry finish so you're getting a bit of the smoke maybe on that nose on that kind of Pete and then you're also getting that lovely sherry color and sherry finish so 43% 15 year old some people love Pete some people hate it it's just it is kind of based on your on your palate I was never a big Pete fan actually kind of in the in my journey through Scotch but I've been kind of been growing on me I've been like kind of appreciating it more and more and I think the Beaumont kind of sits in between I would put this at a solid 7.2 so this is very well-balanced great value you're getting those those sherry citrus acidic notes and then you're also getting that kind of sea air saltiness one of my favorite actually experiences I had at Beaumont distillery it's obviously right by the water and there's a restaurant right nearby where they do Beaumont what they call Beaumont oysters so basically so you take a few drops of the Beaumont whisky they serve it with a Beaumont 15 and you get a big plate of oysters you put a bit of the whisky in the in the oyster you have the oyster and then you put a bit more of the whisky then you drink the whisky out of the shell with the brininess and all that and you can kind of imagine that how this would do well in that circumstance I'm not coming back until there's oysters yeah that sounds phenomenal plate of a plate of fresh oysters please yeah if you can't get it from Scotland Australia can contribute some you know there's some pretty good oysters down there yeah that sounds phenomenal so you met with all of these different finance ministers, heads of state, presidents of countries.
• 46:44
  What did you take away, like looking back now, because maybe in the moment, it's not always kind of easy to appreciate.
• 46:51
  I mean, that's a pretty, most people in the world have not met probably the number of state officials and presidents and people that you've had a chance to interact with, their office, their people.
• 47:00
  Looking back on that experience now, what do you take away from that?
• 47:03
  Like, what did you learn about people in those positions?
• 47:08
  Are they the, I guess, my view, because I don't know a lot of those people, are they what I think they are?
• 47:14
  It's all about them, big ego, short, you know, very short focus, not really in it to kind of make big changes to their country, just trying to get reelected, or is that a false perception from someone who doesn't really know anyone like that?
• 47:31
  They're not reptiles sent from outer space, you know?
• 47:33
  So- They're people.
• 47:35
  They are very much people.
• 47:38
  Most of my experience is in places where probably have a less of a history with democracy than maybe some of the spots you're referencing, though they're pretty vibrant democracies in some of those places.
• 47:52
  These people are hard workers.
• 47:53
  You don't get near the top of the poll without a really solid work ethic, in my experience.
• 47:58
  Most of them are not idiots, you know?
• 48:00
  They do have to be able to, like, read people, work together, join dots fairly well.
• 48:08
  There's a couple I've met that are sort of sons and daughters of somebody that are not in that mold that are clearly there, but I think Asia writ large is doing a better job of not having those people in positions of power.
• 48:19
  They are, the incentives of political office are tricky in these places.
• 48:27
  Well, because most of the incentive is to stay in power, isn't it?
• 48:30
  I mean, the first goal is to get power, and then the second goal is to stay in power.
• 48:34
  Is that not fair?
• 48:36
  Yes, and in some of these places, it's a bit like Game of Thrones.
• 48:40
  You can't really retire, depending on how rough the system is.
• 48:47
  That's why they talk about corruption being a disease, that once it gets embedded, I view it a bit more like what I imagine a sort of drug gang is like, that you only get promoted.
• 48:58
  You know, we've seen Breaking Bad, we've seen The Shield, you know?
• 49:01
  You and I, if we're in a gang, the only way we can trust each other is we go out and we shoot somebody together, and you know and I know that we've shot somebody together.
• 49:09
  That bonding of shared destinies in a system that is corrupt gets really complex, because the only way you will rise up is if you have that shared pedigree of that with people, and then if you are the lead gang member, you can't just retire, because you're the lead gang member of a really real power structure.
• 49:32
  So, whereas in a place like Australia, where you might get voted out of office and you go on the speaking circuit and you're all fine, some of these places, the downside risk of- Not being in power.
• 49:42
  Not being in power is way more terrifying for you and the people below you.
• 49:47
  Well, good example of that, I just got back from a conference in Sri Lanka, where we had the ex-prime minister, I don't remember his name right, but he's been prime minister seven times in the last 50 years.
• 50:00
  I'm much older now, but so this was a private conference for I was about 40, 50 CEOs from across Asia.
• 50:08
  So he came and did a panel and I wasn't there, but the person organizing the event said he went down to Greece.
• 50:14
  He's not currently in power, but he was, he stepped up in 2022, I believe, when inflation in Sri Lanka was 70% and the currency had gone to, you know.
• 50:25
  They had a revolution.
• 50:26
  Yeah.
• 50:27
  He's the only one who stepped up to do a deal with the IMF and basically save the country.
• 50:32
  He's not in power currently.
• 50:34
  And to your point, he, when my friend went down to, to greet him, he came obviously in an armored vehicle and had lots of security.
• 50:42
  He also had a tank in front of him, like a full tank, because there's been multiple attempts on his life in the last few months, I believe he was just indicted.
• 50:53
  And to your point, he's so entrenched in that system.
• 50:56
  He's been prime minister seven times, been in the system for 50 years.
• 51:00
  He's the only threat that, he's not in power, but the people who are in power, he's the only one they see as a threat.
• 51:08
  So if they can get rid of him, they've now secured their place for, you know, kind of Game of Thrones styles, right?
• 51:14
  It's like, now we're the Lannisters and we just got to get rid of this one guy.
• 51:19
  And then now we're, you know, now we're the only ones that can have that power.
• 51:22
  Yeah.
• 51:23
  And it is.
• 51:24
  Before that, you spent like a month in Sri Lanka, right?
• 51:26
  Yep.
• 51:27
  So, and Sri Lanka, I haven't done as much work in Sri Lanka sort of professionally, but exactly that kind of dynamic of the power centers.
• 51:33
  Power doesn't get given up.
• 51:35
  Power is taken.
• 51:38
  And democracy is a really, like in a functional democracy, a really bizarre construct where elected officials, there is that day of transition and they hand over the pen and it moves.
• 51:47
  That historically is really unusual.
• 51:49
  And certainly most, even sort of semi-functional democracy don't really have that as a- America is really the only real example of that.
• 51:57
  Is that fair?
• 51:58
  I'd say some of the Europeans are probably better at that.
• 52:00
  The successful transition of power, right?
• 52:02
  The peaceful transition of power.
• 52:03
  So far, they have.
• 52:05
  The money doesn't move.
• 52:06
  So I think one of the things I've observed is that like often these families, multiple kids, the more talented kid will stay running the family business and the less talented kid will go into politics.
• 52:16
  So at some level, they're deciding which pocket do I pay taxes or do I pay from my family?
• 52:21
  So you've got this really small circle of elite, which is why people talk about the middle class being so important.
• 52:26
  It is such an important sort of structure in society.
• 52:29
  If you don't have that, if you have a really small elite, then it kind of gets captive and it gets ossified.
• 52:35
  Most of Asia's moving forward slowly.
• 52:38
  Philippines is probably one of those places that, you know, they drift backwards.
• 52:43
  We're back with the family that was in power for what, most of the 80s and 90s?
• 52:48
  And they're what's at the top.
• 52:49
  But again, what's under them.
• 52:50
  And so what I've also seen is I've seen some of these reformist presidents come in and they really do come in with an agenda of, I want to change.
• 52:56
  I do want to make my country better.
• 52:58
  They often then say, well, who's my minister is going to be?
• 53:00
  And you're sitting there.
• 53:01
  If you're going to be a minister, you're sitting there probably running a business.
• 53:03
  You've got choices.
• 53:04
  You're like, damn, dude, do I really want to give up my job being CEO where I have my own fortune?
• 53:10
  I can fly the helicopter.
• 53:11
  I don't have to put up with this sort of crap and due diligence.
• 53:14
  You want me to come be your minister?
• 53:16
  Okay.
• 53:17
  All right.
• 53:18
  You convinced me as a reformist.
• 53:19
  I come.
• 53:20
  join. Okay, then you sit there as a minister, elected. Then you've got your bureaucrats that have actually got the power. Now you're talking the vice minister, vice minister, you're talking the head of the career. So you get two levels below and the system just has this way of the inertia. You can't drive that change. You can't sit there as the president and manage two rungs down and drive that change. Which I think is not only, I mean, I would argue Obama was hit by exactly this or I remember being in I lived in New York. 2007 November 2007 was the election that Obama won and we were I was in New York City that night and we were out at the bar and everyone was watching and election got called pretty early like 11 something p.m. And I remember distinctly in my lifetime, that was the only time I could actually taste hope. Like it was actually in the air if that makes any sense. Like there was this we'd been through 9-11 and a you know long period with Bush senior, I'm sorry, Bush jr etc. And there was just this general feeling in the country particularly obviously in New York and LA and kind of more democratic cities right more multicultural cities that we wanted change right and here comes this first ever young you know African-American president and there was hope in the air. But I would say Obama was was definitely one of those people that had a lot of positive intent but couldn't really get it done the way we've got what's his name now Mondani the new mayor of New York. Same there's a lot of hope and a lot of you know people are expecting a lot of high things but I don't see it happening. It's bloody difficult.
• 54:58
  And that's not Philippines or Myanmar that's you know United States or New York City.
• 55:04
  Being mayor of New York City there's a lot of layers of stuff under there that he's not going to be able to change as much as he wants to. Yeah and that I think is when they people talk about having a sort of a legacy of democracy or democratic kind of it's all of those other levers it's all those other groups the way things lobbyings work we have peak bodies all of that dialogue that goes up and down sort of society the elected politicians on a four-year or whatever it is election cycle are just the top layer there's all the layers underneath. If you don't have those layers underneath to make those sort of changes you can't just put in the top layer or if you do it makes it really tricky because that's the levels below that you really need to sort of move society in a direction steer a boat. So I've seen that but I think going back to regional I think most of the people I've interacted with were decent human beings at least those that were in elected office. Some of the business people perhaps less so. You know some of the stuff in the shadows is probably where some of the the worst stuff happens. If they're going to step in to taking that responsibility of being you know minister x or y then typically there's some of the better ones. I don't believe there's some sort of global cabal of conspiracy theorists that does whatever. I mean these are countries where they can't even count their citizens so if you can't count your citizens the fact that you could stitch together some multi-year you know whatever it's fantasy. So I think once you've had the opportunity of interacting with some of these people they become human they still go to the toilet they still run late they still whatever and they more or less work hard and they've got the right energy.
• 56:36
  They try to do the best in difficult environments.
• 56:40
  Well, and we've seen positive case studies, for example, UAE, I would argue, or Saudi Arabia is a more recent case study in terms of someone new coming into power.
• 56:49
  I can't remember how old he was, the guy from Saudi Arabia, I was like relatively young when he took over and he's been all about transformation, right?
• 56:59
  And we've seen some of that, I don't know who knows how, you know, how depth it is, but we are starting to see things changing in those kinds.
• 57:07
  So it can happen with the right leader.
• 57:08
  We can see some of that.
• 57:10
  And I'd throw up my last comment is, I think Indonesia has probably been, like my time in Asia, the last 20 odd years, Indonesia, I think has been probably the best success story at working a way through.
• 57:19
  Tough times right now, though.
• 57:22
  That's fine.
• 57:23
  But actually, they're building the nation, which was largely a colonial creation at the end of World War Two, and then finding a way to kind of get democracy working.
• 57:31
  They've got some pretty, yeah, they got some pretty serious issues around poverty and religion they've had sort of around the table.
• 57:38
  They sort of found a way to more often than not, since probably the 90s have good leadership.
• 57:42
  But it's a journey in a place like Thailand's been extremely colorful.
• 57:45
  They've got this other power base there with the royal family that goes on and Bangkok is a uniquely sort of empowered city in Bangkok's or Thailand's overall setup.
• 57:54
  Every country is different.
• 57:55
  And that I've just been really lucky to kind of get some, some chance to look at that.
• 57:58
  We'll move on to the last whisky.
• 58:00
  I totally forgot to do this earlier.
• 58:02
  But if you're enjoying this, please like and subscribe.
• 58:05
  I was supposed to do that way earlier, but we'll do it now.
• 58:08
  Naughty, naughty, right.
• 58:09
  And we'll make sure we cheers.
• 58:11
  Cheers.
• 58:12
  A few of those.
• 58:18
  So we're on to whisky number four now.
• 58:21
  This is Oban 14.
• 58:27
  Probably one of my favorite go to, gotta have it at home.
• 58:34
  Very easy to drink that one.
• 58:35
  All the time.
• 58:36
  whisky.
• 58:37
  I think it's just incredible value for money.
• 58:42
  Not very expensive and just great value.
• 58:45
  14 years old.
• 58:46
  You're getting, this is aged in bourbon casks, so different than the last few, which have been sherry, the Dalmore and the Beaumont both in sherry casks, the Dalmore mixed with a few other casks as well.
• 58:58
  Part of it's aging, but the Beaumont in a sherry finish.
• 59:01
  This would be a bourbon finish.
• 59:03
  But just got that depth, right, you're talking about, and just kind of, for me, it just gives layers, right?
• 59:09
  So even when I take one sip and I just kind of hold back, there's, there's more to it.
• 59:13
  There's more to it.
• 59:14
  There's more.
• 59:15
  It's just kind of lingering and lingering.
• 59:16
  This is an easy one to drink at any time.
• 59:19
  I give this a, from the shite to freedom scale, one to 10, I give this a solid 7.4.
• 59:28
  One of my, one of my, yeah, one of my favorite whiskies.
• 59:31
  So let's close off talking about your time at Asia Private Banker.
• 59:35
  So you went from Euromoney to Start, is that correct, Asia Private Banker, or?
• 59:41
  No, I was, I think I was employee number five or six or something, but it was quite- And you grew it to like 50 people or 45, 50 people?
• 59:48
  A bit shy, a bit shy of that.
• 59:50
  I, look, I was, I was lucky to, I had an awareness through one of my past bosses at Euromoney of what they were doing.
• 59:59
  It's- It's a fascinating space dealing with family offices, private bankers across Asia.
• 1:00:06
  And then I had the opportunity to get involved with that and we found some success with scaling that up.
• 1:00:13
  It's still very niche, but it does serve as the main news and data point for private banking and increasingly family offices around Asia, which, as we've talked about, is a really secretive, shy, difficult community of folks to bring together in aggregate.
• 1:00:31
  And as we've established, you love being in and around bankers all the time.
• 1:00:35
  Private bankers, if I had a choice, they're some of the more fun people to be around.
• 1:00:38
  My earlier days at Euromoney was more investment bankers.
• 1:00:40
  They tend to be more transactional, sharper cats, whereas private bankers, it's a relationship.
• 1:00:47
  So they're more about the human.
• 1:00:49
  They make money over the long term of trust, whereas investment bankers obviously tend to have a bit more of a short term, more immediate view.
• 1:00:56
  Private bankers tend to be, I mean, they used to be a little bit sort of seen as second class citizens in the banking world, sort of looked down upon.
• 1:01:03
  I think that's changed a lot as the sort of reality of how these banks out in Asia are earning revenue.
• 1:01:09
  They've risen up.
• 1:01:10
  Obviously, it's often the same client, particularly in Asian context, where most of the big companies are family offices.
• 1:01:17
  So you're dealing with Mr. typically or Mrs. Chan, for want of a better word, as an individual as a private banker versus as their corporate entity, their listed co would be where the investment bank was dealing.
• 1:01:28
  Yeah, that makes sense.
• 1:01:29
  Yeah.
• 1:01:30
  And what was your...
• 1:01:31
  So going back and thinking about, okay, you grew this company from five to 45 people.
• 1:01:37
  Which did you prefer?
• 1:01:38
  Did you like the small team and the five?
• 1:01:41
  Did you enjoy the experience of having to manage 45 people?
• 1:01:46
  What was your...
• 1:01:49
  My respect for entrepreneurs that have found success only dramatically increased over that journey.
• 1:01:55
  It is a very difficult journey for one person.
• 1:02:00
  I was sort of the second person in and so for any founder who's able to go from zero and idea nothing and the skill set you need to survive the first couple of weeks and you know how you need to be really focused on the short term and what can we do today and you need this sort of almost crazy belief and energy on the very short term and as you grow you need more systems and processes and you need to plan longer and for one person to have the skills to be able to do that is really tricky. So I enjoyed the scale up process until I didn't as it might have been with a number of factors come together but I learned a hell of a lot through it. It was a lot more draining and you know what you hear about and I think you've with your ventures understand how all-consuming building a business can become and how much time you think about it and how little sort of space there is for the rest of it. One of the takeaways I took from that process myself was that I needed to be taking care of myself sort of mental and the mental health side of it and I think amongst the entrepreneurial community there's way more healthy dialogues now happening around that. It tends to be quite a lonely experience. It's a very intense experience.
• 1:03:18
  Well that's why I recommend whisky.
• 1:03:20
  whisky helps to a point. Coping strategies. No you're not. And there's more around the table than whisky but I think that is I mean that is a that's a siren song for people who need that stress relief and some people succumb to it and that journey then of working out how to be resilient and take that long-term marathon not a sprint is tricky. I probably got stuck a little bit on the sprinting side of things. I didn't appreciate the longevity of it as much as I needed to. There were some other factors COVID being being one of them but was was fascinating. I really enjoyed the energy with that kind of growth.
• 1:04:00
  It was just lovely to be able to build something in an Asia context.
• 1:04:03
  Most of the rest of my career has had me explaining to folks in London or New York, kind of how to do things out here, which continues to be amazingly challenging.
• 1:04:13
  I don't understand why the level of ignorance at senior leadership still exists about Asia, but it does across so many very successful large companies.
• 1:04:21
  This region is particularly tricky about how it works and how you do business.
• 1:04:26
  So it was lovely to be doing a place where all roads led to somewhere in Asia, and yeah, we had some success with that, and they continue to have some success building post my departure.
• 1:04:37
  Very good.
• 1:04:38
  Well, with that, we'll close things off and just say thank you so much for spending the time with us, sharing a lot of your learnings.
• 1:04:45
  I think we covered everything from what people eat in Australia to how things work in the Myanmar government.
• 1:04:54
  We missed some stories about Ukraine last week, last month.
• 1:04:57
  But anyway, that's fine.
• 1:04:58
  We'll have to have you back next time.
• 1:05:00
  Yes.
• 1:05:01
  So yeah, look, I think just congratulations on the career you've had so far.
• 1:05:07
  Obviously wishing you the best in whatever you choose next.
• 1:05:09
  But I think just the wealth of experience that you've had across Asia just comes out in everything that you say.
• 1:05:15
  And it's really just fun.
• 1:05:16
  I hope we can have you back and delve into more stories from Thai governments to trying to pull stuff off.
• 1:05:23
  When there's no microphones here, but yes, maybe and maybe a champagne later on.
• 1:05:27
  Thanks, Rakesh.
• 1:05:28
  All the best to you as well.
• 1:05:29
  Thank you.
• 1:05:30
  And with that, yeah, that's our episode.
• 1:05:32
  So as always, the whisky's never done and neither is the conversation.
• 1:05:36
  whisky unfinished.
• 1:05:37
  Cheers.
• 1:05:38
  Hey guys, Rakesh here, the whisky Chief.
• 1:05:40
  Firstly, thanks so much for watching this episode.
• 1:05:43
  It really means a lot to us.
• 1:05:44
  If you can like and subscribe below, it just really helps us to keep bringing you the best whiskies in the world.
• 1:05:50
  So long and I'll talk to you soon.
• 1:05:52
  Cheers.