2020-03-01_Forbes_Asia

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MARCH 2020 FORBES ASIA

ANDRE KOO

corporate defaults. Chailease’s lending in mainland China

grew 26% in 2019 to NT$131 billion ($4.4 billion), to more

than a third of the company’s almost $13 billion total port-

folio. “We might slow down a little bit because of the vi-

rus situation,” says Chailease senior executive vice president

Kevin Liao. Although Chailease’s Wuhan office is closed (for

now), he says: “We expect continuous growth in China in

the next 10, 20 years without question.”

hailease is only a small piece of a much larg-
er family empire, started over a century ago
by Koo’s great grandfather, Koo Hsien-jung.
The crown jewel is CTBC Bank, founded by
Koo’s father Jeffrey Sr. in 1966 and helmed
for a time by Koo’s oldest brother and Wharton grad Jef-
frey Jr., now 55. With $105 billion in assets in 2018, it is
Taiwan’s largest private bank by assets. Next is investment
bank China Development Financial Holdings, with $100
billion in assets, where Jeffrey Sr.’s second son and Whar-
ton alum Angelo Koo, 54, served for five years as chairman
COURTESY OF CHAILEASE HOLDINGS(and now runs one of its subsidiaries).

C

Koo graduated from the New York Military Academy (left page).

Posing with his father Jeffrey Koo Sr. (left). As a cadet, Koo’s

responsibilities included caring for horses and their stables (top).

Koo says the academy drilled into him a strong work ethic and

discipline that he credits with his success today.

The youngest of Jeffrey Sr.’s three sons, Koo

started down a different path before becoming

chairman of Chailease. Lured by its glossy bro-

chures, he convinced his parents to enroll him

at age 14 in the New York Military Academy,

whose notable alumni include Donald Trump.

Once there, he found he wasn’t prepared for

the rigors of military school. “I thought about

quitting several times,” he says. He’s now glad

he stuck it out—he says the academy instilled

a strong work ethic and discipline that helped

him to succeed.

Koo followed in his father’s footsteps to earn

his M.B.A. from NYU’s Stern School in 1994,

then stayed in New York to work at real estate in-

vestment firm Colony Capital for a year. “[Found-

er] Thomas Barrack showed me the ropes and

got me excited about real estate,” says Koo. “It

shaped what I wanted to do.”

Koo left Colony to oversee his family’s U.S.

property investments, including Hilton and

Radisson hotels across the country. “That was the

most enjoyable, fun part of my life,” he says of his

two years in hospitality. In 1996, though, Jeffrey

Sr. called his youngest son back to Taiwan to join

a backwater of his empire, Chailease.

Koo’s first assignment: learn about the divi-

sions under the Chailease brand. Chailease was

already filling a vital gap in Taiwan’s financial

ecosystem, providing loans to small companies

that most banks shunned as too high-risk and