THE VALUE OF INTEGRITY
Jos Parengkuan, founder and President Commissioner of Syailendra Capital, believes that integrity in business is everything. He considers the trust his company has earned from clients, as well as the loyalty of its employees, are his biggest achievements,
FOR ME, power is the ability to get people to listen to your ideas and vision, believe in them, and then willingly support you to execute those ideas,” declares Jos Parengkuan. “In many ways, I see power as being very much a function of trust.”
Parengkuan is the founder and President Commissioner of Syailendra Capital, an independent fund management firm providing value-added investment solutions to clients. “Just over 10 years ago, my partners and I started this fund management firm, literally from nothing,” he says. “Through hard work, persistence and creativity, Syailendra has been consistently profitable from year one, and today we are managing funds totalling close to 9 trillion rupiah.
“That’s pretty impressive. What I am most proud of, however, is not the amount of money we are managing or the profit we are making every year. I consider the trust we’ve earned from clients and the high degree of loyalty from our employees as our biggest achievements. After all, this is a trust business.”
About 80 percent of the capital Syailendra manages has come from institutional investors like pension funds and insurance companies, and also from foundations and some publicly listed companies. “Actually, the kinds of services that we provide to client is not that much different from the others,” says Parengkuan. “Except that, in this kind of business, you try to differentiate yourself from the competition by doing little things here and there, on top of providing good services to the clients. So, performance is one thing, but it’s not the ultimate thing in this business.
“Most of our clients are institutional clients. They expect you to visit them regularly, and to provide them with market updates and insights that not many people are talking about. On top of all that is the need to provide them with the solutions they require. Because everyone’s financial needs are becoming increasingly complex nowadays. Not everyone wants to see a high return only. Sometimes, they come to you with a different kind of problem and they need your expertise to help them solve it. So, you have to be creative. I believe that one of the differences about Syailendra is that we are quite creative in providing solutions to our clients.”
Parengkuan has 27 years of experience in the capital markets, encompassing equity research, investment banking and fund management. A graduate of City University Business School in London, he began his career with Citibank in Jakarta, before joining Lippo Securities as a research analyst in 1990. In 1999, he joined Danareksa, Indonesia’s leading local investment banking firm, to co-head the firm’s equity institutional sales before taking charge of its fund management business in 2000. He established Danareksa’s wealth management arm in 2003.
Why did Parengkuan quit his promising professional career and go out on his own? “When I graduated from business school in London back in 1999, to be frank, I never thought I’d become an entrepreneur,” he replies. “But as the years went by, it sort of came naturally. I started to realise