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Swire Pacific chairman brings three decades of experience to a diverse and growing business seeking new pastures in China
On a sunny Monday morning, John Slosar, chairman of Swire Pacific, sits in a bright and spacious room at the Opposite House, a luxury boutique hotel in the bustling Sanlitun area of Beijing.
In the top-floor suite of the Swire-owned hotel, Slosar, 58, takes a moment out of his busy day to share his vision for the diversified conglomerate as it enters its 150th year on the Chinese mainland.
Pondering Swire's corporate motto - the Latin phrase Esse Quam Videri, meaning "to be, rather than to seem to be" - he says: "This expresses the core ethics of Swire Group pretty well.
"We want to do and we like doing real businesses that deliver the real value. It's important to consumers and other businesses."
Although Swire was founded in the United Kingdom and remains headquartered in London, it is a name indelibly associated with Asia, and with Hong Kong in particular.
Among its core businesses is Cathay Pacific, the Hong Kong-based airline regularly named as one of the world's best. Swire also owns several major mixed-use developments in the special administrative region, including the Pacific Place high-end mall and office buildings.
Highlighting the diversity of the company's portfolio is one of Swire's most well-known products in Asia - its brand of cube sugar, Taikoo.
Besides property, airlines and other aviation interests, Swire is invested in a Coca-Cola bottling business and a range of trade and offshore industries. With many of these ventures in its portfolio for decades, it is eyeing even more growth.
"Although we have been around for a very long time, it is not like we have very old businesses, but businesses with a lot of growth," says Slosar, who became the Taipan, as the Swire chairman is known, in March.
Slosar's role involves being the head of Cathay Pacific Airways, Swire Pacific, Swire Properties, John Swire & Sons (Hong Kong), and the Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company.
Laying out his vision for the company, Slosar says Swire continues to seek new investment opportunities.
"If something new and interesting presented itself that we thought we could add value to, we would love to try new things in China," he says, citing Swire's recently opened cold storage facilities in Shanghai and Langfang in Hebei province as examples.
"There will be a market in the future for high-quality cold storage, which is good for food quality. It means you can transport food to a greater distance, keep it refrigerated, and have it stay fresher when it arrives at people's plates."
Slosar expects to open up to six more cold storage facilities in the next three years, making Swire a leader in China in this particular field.
Maintaining such a diversified portfolio is not easy, he says, adding that the key is independence.
"Let all the businesses run pretty much independently," he says. "Each business has its own chief executive, its own management team and they are responsible for developing their businesses. We don't try to run all these businesses from the center as one unit, giving the management teams room to play and develop."
Swire has its own talent search and cultivation system. Almost all of its management team is developed internally. Every year, the company hires between 20 and 30 university graduates, trains and assigns them to different positions in various businesses and locations, under the tutelage of strong managers.
Employees are then rotated through various businesses and positions so they can learn a variety of skills.
"Then they tend to spend quite a long time in Swire because they have a very strong feeling of Swire's culture," says Slosar. "And the key point of Swire's culture is that we always try to do things in a good and high-quality way."
Slosar got his start with Swire as a management trainee in 1980. The graduate from Cleveland, Ohio was fresh from receiving degrees in economics from two prestigious universities, Columbia in New York and Cambridge in the UK.
Over his more than three decades at Swire, Slosar has worked in the United States, Hong Kong and Thailand.
"When I started in the beverages business in 1998, one of the first places I went to was Zhengzhou," he says of his time as chairman of Swire Beverages in the capital of Central China's Henan province.
"At that time, the Zhengzhou bottler sold about 4 million cases a year. And now 16 years later, they sell 125 million cases." The group's most mature activity in China is the beverages business, he adds.
Slosar, who has two children aged 20 and 18, says although his work keeps him busy he tries to strike a balance between work and life in general.
"I like to go to the gym to keep fit," he says. "I also write book reviews for Hong Kong Club magazine. My wife, who is from Thailand - I need to be with her as well."
Experienced in a wide range of business areas, Slosar encourages calm even in times of economic crisis.
"Each business has its challenges and different businesses at different times can be difficult, but that's just business," he says.
He gives the example of the 2009 global financial crisis.
"In the spring of 2009, the Chinese economy was very badly impacted. All the factories in the Pearl River Delta just stopped for three or four months. That affected our cargo businesses very badly and our passenger businesses as well."
The trick is always not to let emotions get in the way, he says, adding: "Don't get too self-congratulatory when things are good and don't get too down when things are bad. Try to stay on a stable level."
Swire has three ongoing real estate projects - Taikoo Li Sanlitun and Indigo in Beijing and Taikoo Hui in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong province. All are bustling modern developments which are leading shopping, dining and entertainment destinations. The group's property business tends to be retail-led, Slosar says.
"Our real expertise seems to be bringing together brands, in an attractive and interesting environment that facilitates people having a chance to shop for those brands. Maybe there are some offices, hotels and service apartments involved, but the real leader of the business for us is retail. That's where our skill is."
Swire will be busy with property in China over the coming years, he says. "Properties only just broke even last year (in China). Five years from now, it should be doing quite well."
Due to open soon, for example, the Daci Temple Project in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province, is a retail-led mixed-use development.
Another major project, the Dazhongli project in Shanghai, will combine office space, retail and hotels and is expected to be up and running by late 2016.
A joint venture project with China's CITIC Real Estate is set for Dalian in the northeastern province of Liaoning. The retail property will hold residential units, which marks the group's first experience with a residential project in the country.
A key feature Swire maintains with its Chinese projects is not just in construction, he says, but also in the running and operation of the buildings in order to develop and encourage businesses. This approach is not followed by all developers.
"Our philosophy is to do things in the long term that can really add value, where focusing on excellence (and) on quality can make a difference," he says.
Contact the authors at fanfeifei@chinadaily.com.cn and huyuanyuan@chinadaily.com.cn
