By Lorna Tan, Senior Correspondent

Dr Ng Cher Yew, executive chairman of China-based abalone producer Oceanus Group, learnt the importance of looking out for money-making opportunities from an early age.

His business acumen was honed as a student observing how his grandfather conducted his biscuit business, which rose and eventually folded when it failed to beat the competition.

In late 2005, Dr Ng saw a business opportunity in the China-based firm Oceanus Bio-Tech which, just three days before its listing on the stock exchange here, was dealt a severe blow by a winter storm.

The storm destroyed most of the firm's fish farms, resulting in it suffering huge financial losses. The listing was cancelled. He lost no time in injecting his personal savings of $5 million to turn the firm around. Oceanus was listed here last year and is now the largest abalone producer in the world.

A Colombo scholarship-holder, Dr Ng, 49, holds a degree in veterinary medicine and surgery from Murdoch University in Australia. After his graduation in 1983, he worked at the Ministry of National Development for about six years before he was headhunted by a Belgian chemical and pharmaceutical firm Solvay & Cie to be its area manager, and based here.

He did this for three years, and it was followed by a three-year stint with the same firm in Hong Kong where he set up a marketing arm and was the managing director.

He left Solvay in 1997 to set up his own business, Solpac Chemicals, in Hong Kong with an initial investment of $500,000. It sold related chemicals and pharmaceuticals for animals. It broke even in the first year and he has since invested a total of $3 million in the business.

In 2000, he and four partners set up a venture capital firm to manage funds. Called the Springboard-Harper fund, it attracted money from the United States, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singaporean investors like DBS Bank and IBM. He is still the director of the $70 million fund. The fund invested in Oceanus in 2004.

This year, the firm ventured into the restaurant business in China with 20 outlets. Its first outlet in Singapore, Ah Yat Tian Xia, was opened at Orchard Central last Monday.

He is married to homemaker Amy Tan, 46, and they have three daughters, Alissa, 20, Amelyn, 17, and Amanda, 14.

Q: Are you a spender or saver?

I'm a combination of both. I save so that I can spend and invest. I'm focused on what I want and I calculate how to get there. The savings come naturally. So I don't have a fixed savings programme but I save to invest for wealth creation purposes.

Q: How much do you charge to your credit cards every month?

I charge about $5,000 a month to my credit cards, which I pay in full. Credit card debt is one of the worst things because the interest rate is high. I use them only for convenience. I visit the ATM a few times a month and I withdraw a total of $5,000 a month.

Q: What financial planning have you done for yourself?

In my younger days, I could be highly invested in risky business and less in insurance and bonds because I could work should anything go wrong. As I am older, my portfolio is now diversified to include more stable asset classes while I continue to invest in new businesses.

Currently, 60 per cent of my portfolio is in bonds, insurance and properties. For my insurance component, I have mostly whole-life plans and my annual premiums are about $60,000. The balance of my portfolio is in equities - 10 per cent - and 30 per cent are in new businesses.

My stocks are mostly local and US ones, including the banks like Citigroup and UBS. I pick stocks based on analysing the firms' annual reports and analysts' reports and company announcements. Half of my stock portfolio comprises blue chips.

Q: Moneywise, what were your growing-up years like?

I have four brothers and one sister. I am the fifth child. My father and mother used to work in my grandfather's business which sold homemade biscuits. We lived with my grandparents and their 13 children (my father was the eldest) in a kampung in Hougang.

I started working in the biscuit factory when I was in primary school, sorting and packing biscuits. Unfortunately, the business folded when I was in my late teens because my grandfather failed to look out for new product development and automation. It was not competitive. Still, the business supported the family's needs and at its peak, it could afford to buy over the land that the factory sat on and employ 30 staff.

Q: How did you get interested in investing?

I'm interested in wealth creation. Never let money stagnate. I need to put money into different assets for it to churn. Driven by my wealth creation objective, I felt that I needed to understand all forms of investments. This was when I had some spare money, when I was setting up the Springboard-Harper fund.

I realised that to be an investor, I must always do my homework. I invest in the merits and potential of the business, not in market sentiment. What is important is learning the business concept and understanding the management.

Q: What property do you currently own?

I have three properties in Singapore and one in Shanghai. In 1997, I bought a 1,800 sq ft condominium unit in Bukit Timah for about $1.1 million. It is rented out at $5,200 a month.

Last year, I bought a three-storey semi-detached house in the suburbs . It has a built-in area of 5,000 sq ft.

Early this year, I bought a 2,400 sq ft condo unit in District 9 for slightly over $5 million. It will be completed in two years' time.

I also own a 2,700 sq ft condo in Shanghai which is rented out for around $4,000 a month. It was bought in 2005 for $500,000. All my properties are fully paid- up.

Q: What's the most extravagant thing you have bought?

It's my car, a Mercedes Benz S350 which I bought for $328,000 last year. I used to drive a BMW 7 Series. My preference for big continental cars is mainly for safety reasons.

Q: What's your retirement plan?

As far as money is concerned, I should be pretty okay for life.

The question is how to keep myself occupied as I get older. I will still be looking after my business - that's where the passion is. I will need $20,000 a month for me and wife in our golden years.

Q: Home is now...

My semi-D.

Q: I drive...

The bluish-black Mercedes S350.

Q: What has been your worst investment to date?

I lost about $2 million during the period from 2000 to 2005, when I invested in five or six Internet-related firms. These firms folded. The common problem was that the management and founders of these companies were less than passionate.

I was a passive investor then and did not understand the founders enough although I liked the business concepts of the firms.

Having said that, there were some Internet-related firms that I invested in that did very well.

Q: And your best investment?

It is my investment in Oceanus Group. In 2006, I pumped in my savings of

$5 million to turn the firm around and make it the largest abalone producer in the world. Last year, the firm achieved a net profit of 193.5 million yuan

(S$40 million) on a turnover of 319 million yuan. I have a 40 per cent share in Oceanus' market capitalisation of some $650 million, so my share works out to about $260 million.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.