FIRST OF TWO PARTS

The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said, “The way to do is to be.” As I interpret it, what Lao Tzu meant simply is that for something to be accomplished, we would have to make it happen. And this is what inspired me, 65 years ago, to start a one- man accounting firm shortly after the liberation of Manila when World War II ended. I had big dreams but I was also realistic enough to acknowledge that I had to take it one step at a time.

I had spent a great part of the war in India as a cryptographer, breaking codes of intercepted Japanese communications. My doctoral studies in Columbia University had been unceremoniously interrupted but I knew that I had to make myself useful. Decoding enemy messages in the middle of nowhere may not sound attractive to most but it gave me a perspective on how, in time, the world will become smaller through communication links. My experience there taught me that what would be considered remote will eventually be connected to the mainstream. Players in different industries will come from large, emerging and small economies; this makes it essential to speak a common financial language.

On the day Japan surrendered, code messages stopped and our unit was sent back to New York. In the 1980s, for example, we were the first to have a practice called contract services under our consulting group. This was the pre-