Diversified business strategies and sound financial management are equally important to business success. Mr. Philip Lam, the Executive Director of Hon Kwok Land Investment Company, Limited, Chinney Kin Wing Holdings Limited and Chinney Alliance Group Limited, has extensive financial management experience. Ever since he joined 12 years ago, he has led the Chinney Group through business cycles and broadened its horizons with his steady and pragmatic approach, while monitoring business risks in parallel. With an ever-changing global economic environment, Chinney can always turn crises into opportunities with significant growth and expansion.

Having worked in the banking industry and served as the Director of Finance of the University of Hong Kong before his retirement, Mr. Lam is well connected and has been invited repeatedly by the founding chairman of the group, Dr. James Wong Sai-wing, to join the company. His financial expertise, professional network and personal reputation has contributed to the Group development and provided a crucial safety net.

Chinney Group undertakes many projects for the government and non-profit organizations. The foundation projects can easily exceed tens of millions. One of Mr. Lam’s achievements is to connect with different banks and manage performance bonds, laying out the business foundations for large-scale projects, leading to group business expansion and development.

The leadtime for construction projects is long but Mr. Lam is proud to say that “Chinney has a very good reputation and never fails to pay suppliers.” When talking about the group’s financial management philosophy, Mr. Lam emphasizes that the Group will avoid over- reliance on external financing and adopt sound accounts receivable management with full bad debt provision to control receivable risks. The Group is able to resolve various challenges with its strong negotiation capability and adaptability, with cooperation with its customers.

Being a sound investor, Mr. Lam notes that prudent financial management is not about withholding spendings, but how to generate business values. Chinney continues to invest in advanced equipment to improve production efficiency and create more business opportunities. In recent years, the Group has formulated corresponding strategies to improve its financial stability even further. For example, the construction business focus has shifted to projects in the public sector and infrastructure, non-governmental organizations and higher education institutions to secure stable earnings.

Mr. Lam said that Chinney’s success lies not only to prudent financial management, but also in Dr. Wong’s wisdom of management. Mr. Lam summarized the key takeaways, “Dr. Wong skilfully integrates the Shanghainese management style with modern corporate governance to adopt “truth, fairness, and freedom” as the core values and advocate a “people-oriented” management approach of trust, fairness, and win-win.” He is very appreciative of Chinney’s management respect for talents and being able to delegate and allow employees to perform, thus, building a strong sense of belonging. He is happy to see the group’s chairman, Mr. James Wong inherited this great tradition and build “young leaders” through improving the talent training mechanism, providing systematic managers’ training at different levels, and retaining talents for the future.

After working in the group for more than ten years, Mr. Lam truly feels that Chinney is an enterprise committed to its social responsibilities. The ESG (environmental, social and governance) performance of the 4 listed companies of the Group is satisfactory. He even says: “Sometimes the company would rather make less – employees’ interest first.” Moving forward, he is convinced that Chinney Group will continue to grow and create a better future for the employees and society.