A View from the Top: Ken Choo on being CEO of two companies at once

You’d think two jobs was enough for one man, but Ken Choo is also in charge of a growing empire of football clubs

Ken Choo is also in charge of a growing empire of football clubs owned by his boss, the Malaysian businessman Vincent Tan (EMPICS Sport)

Ken Choo is on his way back from London to Cardiff City Football Club to sign a player when we speak, the signal fading in and out as he speeds down the M4. He spends a lot of time on this route, shuttling between jobs as chief executive of Cardiff City and chief executive of H.R. Owen, a car dealer for luxury brands like Ferrari, Bentley and Maserati.

You’d think two jobs was enough for one man, but Choo is also in charge of a growing empire of football clubs owned by his boss, the Malaysian businessman Vincent Tan, that includes FK Sarajevo in Bosnia, KV Kortrijk in Belgium and a stake in Los Angeles FC in the US.

“Cardiff is a community,” he says. “We have a community foundation where we get involved with 40,000 families and youngsters every year. The community drives the club. The same thing goes with H.R. Owen. The last 12 month we had activities every month. If you buy a car from H.R. Owen you are not just buying a car, you are part of the community.”

It is this sense of community that Choo credits for changing the fortunes of H.R. Owen, which was recently awarded global dealer of the year by Rolls Royce. Two months later, Cardiff City was promoted to the Premier League. Not bad for Choo, who had never worked in cars or football until Tan asked him to manage Cardiff City four years ago.

“He asked me to help out in Cardiff because the club got relegated from the Premier League,” Choo says. Tan had a rocky start at Cardiff after he changed the club colours from blue to red in 2012, reportedly because he believed the colour would bring good fortune.

Months into Choo's appointment, they decided to change the club colours back to blue. “We looked at the history and decided to revert back,” he says. “A lot of fans who were not with us came back.”

Unlike in the boardroom, where Choo might be able to ruffle feathers one day and continue with business the next as if nothing had happened, he found that the psychology in football was more complex. “In a football club you can’t damage the players today and tomorrow is a brand new day,” he says. “You have to handle with care.”

Choo used a similar tactic to lead the transformation of H.R. Owen after he was appointed as chief executive of H.R. Owen in January 2017. Tan bought H.R. Owen for £43.2 million in September 2013 after going to buy a car at the dealer’s Rolls Royce showroom in London and finding the service lacking. He led its transformation as the luxury car market moved away from hard-selling and to a much softer, community-focussed way of selling cars.

“We don’t want a clinical showroom with compliance, LED lights and cars,” Choo says. “We tell our manufacturers that doesn’t work any more. In the last few months they can see it, that things are changing and we need to adapt.”

In a recent renovation of the company’s Jack Barclay Bentley showroom in Mayfair, Choo insisted that the contractors keep the original flooring on the lower floor, where the dealers meet with the customers. “I said just polish it, retain its history,” he says. He also wants to reintroduce an old tradition of taking customers to the Bentley Boys Club to celebrate when they buy a new car. Everything is geared to make the customer feel part of something bigger than themselves.

“If Cardiff plays Manchester City we have our clients sitting and having lunch with board of directors at Man City,” he says. “They are on Sky, their cars are in parked front row and they love it.”

Choo learned to listen to his employees and gain an understanding of local culture as the general manager of Tan’s resorts and casino in the Seychelles. He still relies on these qualities in his role managing H.R. Owen and Cardiff City. “At H.R. Owen we don’t come in and try to change things significantly without listening to what the people want and what our staff wants,” he says. “Some of the suppliers had never met the chief executive before we took over - we are the first ones who went to see them.”

Choo was born in Malaysia. His father, a civil engineer, had his own business, while his mother left her job in the local council to bring up Choo and his siblings. After school, Choo trained as an accountant in Australia and returned home to work as a senior auditor for PwC in Malaysia. It was in Malaysia that he saw a job managing the finances of a casino in the Seychelles owned by Vincent Tan. Not long into that job, Choo sat down with Tan while he was on a visit and Tan, seeing Choo’s potential, promoted him to general manager.

This was a formative moment. “No one teaches you how to do it,” he says. “When I got the first job in the Seychelles, either you sink or swim. Everyone in the head office says, ‘Lets see if this GM sinks or swims. He’s in the Indian Ocean, he’s alone, let’s see.’”

When I ask what he does in his spare time, he says: “sleeping”. Choo, now 45, lives with his wife in Brentford, near Kew Gardens, and while they have little time for hobbies, they like to travel around Europe: “We like the gardens and the greens.”

Under Tan, H.R. Owen is looking to buy the car showrooms and the land underneath. “I want the staff to know that in future we don’t have to pay rent. Rent keeps going up and at the end of the day, they don’t have much left for themselves.”

Choo would like to return to Malaysia eventually, though he says his work at H.R. Owen is not yet done: “During our tenure, which is not forever, we want to make sure it has a future."