You Got ’Em, Gautam

They say that accountants are like actuaries but without the charisma. Blackstone Singapore’s Gautam Banerjee is an exception

Gautam Banerjee retired in 2012, at the age of 58. He had been the executive chairman of Pricewaterhousecoopers (PWC) Singapore, for nine years. Unlike many of the things he has done in his life, he wasn’t very good at it (retirement), and failed miserably. When asked to head up Blackstone Singapore in the same year, he was made an offer he didn’t refuse, and in less than the time it would take to ask, “Where did I store my golf clubs?” he was up and running as senior managing director and chairman.

It wasn’t difficult to see why Blackstone co-founder Stephen Schwarzman identified him as the ideal person to head up the operations in Singapore. He needed a job—perhaps without realising it—had the perfect credentials, and golf courses in Singapore didn’t need more heaven and earth (mostly earth) to be moved. It was a marriage made in heaven for a man who, when asked about the character traits that have contributed most to his undoubted success, springs like a coiled coil to the word “integrity”.

Blackstone is big on integrity. After all, “it invests for the longterm because building successful, resilient businesses can lead to better returns, stronger communities and economic growth that works for everyone”. I grabbed that from their website. They must have identified Banerjee as a kindred spirit; a poster boy, even, for a company with designs on Asia and needing a more than credible presence in the region. It was a good fit.

As the saying goes, however, “talk is cheap”. This is probably why innumerable business entities talk the talk when referring to natty industry buzzwords such as sustainability, environmental awareness, corporate social responsibility, inclusivity, accountability, transparency, diversity, and … the list goes on.

Disproportionately few, however, walk the walk, because in some cases it’s inconvenient, tiresome and involves time-consuming effort, and in others it’s simply too expensive. An analogy can be drawn with vegetables, if I may make so bold. We’d all like to eat organic fruit and veg, and products derived from our animal brethren who had happy lives while they still had a pulse and were sung lullabies before they were put to bed at night. But the alternatives are invariably cheaper, and it’s not everyone who has the privilege of making a choice.

Blackstone doesn’t seem to be one of those companies, however, and under the tutelage of the vastly experienced Banerjee, is walking the walk with a casual strut and a slightly self-effacing gait. Its ethos is sound, and it appears to have developed organically (no correlation to fruit and vegetables) and now has US$684 billion in AUM (assets under management).

Blackstone is making all the right noises when it comes to accountability and transparency in what can often be a murky world, and Banerjee is entitled to share some of the “blame” for this.

He has kind eyes that belie a fiery determination, and an acute intelligence that, in some ways, he still feels he has to prove. This shouldn’t be necessary for a man who sits on several multinational boards and has an excellent business reputation, but it’s there anyway. He talks about his “retirement” from Pricewaterhousecoopers in 2012—he originally joined Price Waterhouse in 1982—with amusement. “When Steve (Schwarzman) was interviewing me, he said ‘why are you retiring at 58?’ and was surprised to hear that the retirement age for partners in PWC Singapore at that time was 58, a legacy of the firm’s colonial past, when most of the partners were British and after retiring went back to England or Scotland to do something quite different.”

Banerjee realised, however, that it didn’t have to work that way in Asia, and when Blackstone came a-calling, he was there to pick up. Schwarzman must have made the right overtures and hit the relevant warm buttons, and nine years later we are looking at a man who’s both comfortable with himself and also with what he’s doing and the values he’s embodying.

Clearly he would like to see Singapore at the head of the table when it comes to technology and investments therein in Southeast Asia, and this appears to be in keeping with Blackstone’s brief. “Eighty of the world’s top 100 tech companies have their Asian headquarters in Singapore,” Banerjee rattles off, with a degree of pride. “And we have more than 4,000 tech-enabled start-ups.” I ask him if Singapore has a right to describe itself as Asia’s “Silicon Valley”, and he seems amused.

“We love our taglines. But we’ve come a long way, and I’m quite proud of what Singapore has achieved.” The investment world has recognised the potential, and in sniffing out the relevant opportunities seems sanguine when it comes to making the necessary injections. This is what Blackstone is doing under Banerjee’s stewardship, and I can’t help thinking that not only do they have the right man for the job, but also that Banerjee has found a(nother) company in which he feels that he belongs and is quite prepared to uphold its meritocratic ethos and focus on finding the right people for the right roles.

“What I’m doing influences what a lot of other people do,” he says, with nary a hint of arrogance. It’s true.

He has kind eyes that belie a fiery determination, and an acute intelligence that, in some ways, he still feels he has to prove