When Terry Matthews sits down in the exalted company of people who own famous golf courses, he has a line that can't be beaten. He says: "I bet your golf course never had a fighter plane parked on the 17th fairway?"
Needless to say that captures attention. More on that incident later.
The founder and chairman of Wesley Clover International doesn't play golf since he feels it "takes too much time". But he understands the importance of the game.
"One of the things I found is that the intersection between senior people in business and golf is almost a 100 per cent . . . I always think if you wish to make a region economically successful, then first build a golf course and then a good hotel."
Mr Matthews currently owns six golf courses, four of which are in the UK. Of these, three are championship courses. The 2010 Ryder Cup - the biennial competition between the European and US teams - was held at one of his courses in the UK.
For a man who started out as an apprentice at a British Telecom lab when he was 15 years old, Mr Matthews, with a personal wealth of around US$2 billion (S$2.7 billion), has done quite well for himself.
Wesley Clover is a investment management firm and holding company with active interests in information and communications technologies (ICT) and real estate. Over his career, he has started more than 100 companies, of which only seven have failed to make money.
Mr Matthews was knighted in 2001.
Born in the industrial town of Newport in south Wales, the one thing Mr Matthews remembers from his childhood was the heavy engineering and machinery that surrounded him.
There were steel plants, coal mines, railways, plumbing and electrical equipment all around. "I was brought up in an environment of engineering and I enjoyed it. I used to read ferociously and got to know how things work."
It was but a natural progression for him to start tinkering with gadgets, taking them apart and putting them together again.
Very soon the young Mr Matthews got the monicker "Mr Repair It" as townsfolk started to bring all their broken gadgets - a radio or other electrical appliance - for him to repair.
As an apprentice at the British Telecom lab, Mr Matthews was part of the team that developed equipment for the first satellite, Telstar.
While working, he did not neglect his studies. "In my career, virtually all my education was part-time after I took the apprentice job."
He got an honours degree in electronics from the University College of Wales, Swansea, in 1969.
"It's always good if young people can have a job and be educated at the same time. This is, in my view, a really good way to get an education while learning a trade."
Mr Matthews was around 25 years old when he went to Canada for a holiday.
While there, he was offered a job by Ottawa-based chipmaker MicroSystems International.
Since the salary was three times what he was getting at British Telecom, he took the job. At MicroSystems, Mr Matthews met Michael Cowpland with whom he would later found his first company.
At MicroSystems, Mr Matthews learned something which would stay with him for the rest of his life. As manager of applications, it was his job to write applications which would run on the integrated circuits (ICs) that MicroSystems made.
He realised that it was important to talk to clients to find out what they wanted rather than do something and hope somebody would want it.
So Mr Matthews went all over the world, including Singapore, to meet clients and find out their requirements - and to make contacts that would stand him in good stead.
In 1972, the entrepreneurial bug bit Mr Matthews and he decided to start his own company along with Mr Cowpland. They both thought they had found the perfect niche for their business.
"In North America, at that time, there was a big issue with noise pollution. And at the same time, they were building row houses, which were called town houses, with little lawns in front of them."
The grass on these lawns needed to be mowed and it didn't make sense to buy a petrol-powered lawn mower due to the loud noise they made.
Mr Matthews and his partner decided to import silent cordless electric lawn mowers from England to sell in Canada.
"Sears (the chain of US department stores) thought it was a great idea to have silent electric lawn mowers with batteries on their catalogue," he recalls.
With a loan of US$4,000 from the Bank of Nova Scotia and some personal savings, the two of them set up a company called Mitel, short for Mike and Terry Lawn Mowers.
Mr Matthews and his partner ordered the lawn mowers and expected them to arrive in January well in time to get them into the shopping catalogues before the Spring sales.
Unfortunately the container carrying the lawn mowers was lost in transit.
Eventually it did show up but only at the end of October!
"The trouble is you cannot sell lawn mowers during the winter in Canada. I remember the purchasing guys asked me if they could be converted into snow blowers!"
That setback didn't faze the young owners of Mitel.
Mr Matthews recalls: "I'm very persistent and don't give up so easily. So we worked around the clock - literally around the clock, seven days a week - developing an electronic product, a tone receiver for a push button phone. Mike is a great designer, one of the best I've known. And as for myself, remember I'd been around the world talking to clients while at MicroSystems. I had the contacts and I talked with switching equipment makers and found out that in push button phones, the biggest problem was tone receivers which were bulky and cost US$1,500 each."
Mitel developed what was then the world's first single-card touch-tone receiver and it cost only US$150.
The smaller size and lower price were made possible by the fact that new technology was available.
"We used what's called active filters that gave a better performance in the dynamic range and made the device dramatically smaller. Even at a US$150 selling point, we were making 80 per cent gross profit. I even felt a little bit guilty but not for long. But that started the company up. Then we brought in money from investors because I had the customers ready to buy and I had the product and this was a pretty good formula."
Mitel now needed working capital and at the same time it hired new graduates. "They lived at home and had no running expenses and I had no money to pay them so I gave them ownership.
"Now here's the key to success: Young people, they can live at very low income but ownership changes the chemistry.
If you work and you get paid, then it's over the moment you finish the day but if you get ownership, it's not over since you want the ownership to be worth something."
Mr Matthews banked on the fact that young people who were not married and didn't have any children could work seven days a week.
The products came out quickly, guided by client input and Mitel did extremely well. Every US$1 share in 1973 was worth US$2.5 million 10 years later. "We made millionaires out of a lot of people," notes Mr Matthews.
He adds that along the way, many employees at Mitel became wealthy not only because they had share options but also because they got opportunities.
"For instance, one young man who was 17 years old was in the warehouse moving boxes. Within a year, he was driving a truck. He got used to the business and was a bright young man, though not very well educated, (and) he became vice-president of operations. Later on, he became president of a company that I started up."
At Mitel, another opportunity beckoned. The new technology of microprocessors and other semiconductor devices started to bring about a sea change in the electro-mechanical PBX gear that was being used for telephony.
The company again went for the same formula - it brought in new graduates and gave them ownership and they in turn became passionate and worked seven days a week.
"We were the first company to develop software-driven switches. All the features and functions were driven through software."
Mitel's SX200 PBX launched with immediate success in the market for small-sized PBX systems since it was cheaper, more functional and quicker to install.
Mitel became one of the more successful manufacturers of small PBX systems and telecom semiconductors in the world and it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1981.
In 1985, British Telecom bought a controlling interest in Mitel and Mr Matthews and Mr Cowpland parted ways. Mr Cowpland went on to set up a company that later became Corel and Mr Matthews founded Newbridge Networks in 1986.
Newbridge become a leader in the worldwide data networking industry, manufacturing data communications products, especially ATM devices and routers.
At one point of time, it employed more than 6,500 employees and had revenue of U$1.8 billion in fiscal 1999. In 2000, Newbridge was acquired by Alcatel for US$7.1 billion.
The deal with Alcatel shot Mr Matthews into the billion-dollar league. In the same year, he bought back the Mitel PBX business and company name and took the company private.
Investing heavily in the company, Mr Matthews turned it into a broadband communications company. The company has made significant investments in enterprise Voice over IP telephony (VoIP) technology. Mitel went public again in 2010.
While Mitel and Newbridge have been two major ICT companies on Mr Matthews's resume, he has started up around 110 companies over his career.
As he sees it, most venture capitalists (VCs) or angel investors get involved with, say, 10 companies and hope that one makes it.
"But my ratios are totally different. I'm very technical and also very observant. And the other thing I like is to make sure that the people I work with have the right characteristics.
"So when I start up a company, I typically interview 10 people to get one. You need hard work ethics, which is kind of absolute. You must have people who communicate well and they must be technically well educated."
But, he adds, at the end of the day, it's the team.
"Anyone in industry will tell you that the No 1 item to look for is the ability to work as a team. The No 2 item is also the team and the No 3 item is still the team.
"At the moment, there are around 40 technology companies in which I have a significant stake even though half of my wealth comes from real estate developments like hotels, golf courses and office buildings."
Among his real estate properties, the most high-profile one is the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport.
The sprawling 2,000 acre (809 hectare) property comprises two adjoining hotels, a country inn and luxury lodges.
It also has two spas, six restaurants, three championship golf courses, two golf and country clubs, high ropes courses, laser tag, archery and other attractions.
Central to the hotel is the Manor House with which Mr Matthews has a special connection. The Manor House was built in 1860 by Thomas Powell, then the largest coalmine owner in the South Wales coalfield.
Over the decades, the Manor House changed hands many times and in 1940, it became the Lydia Beynon Maternity Hospital. Mr Matthews was one of the more than 60,000 babies born there. It closed as a hospital in March 1977.
He bought the Manor House in 1980, investing £100 million (S$202 million) in a redevelopment and refurbishment project.
"Over the years since then, I kept buying land from farmers who wanted to sell. So now there are 2,000 acres of land and there's a major river that goes through it. The Manor overlooks the Bristol Channel and hence it has great views. I'm still building as nothing is ever finished for me, it's always work in progress."
Rated as one of the best hotels in the UK, the Celtic Manor turns away about US$100 million worth of business due to under capacity, says Mr Matthews.
"Now there's a choice, do you leave it almost full all the time or do you build to take what you are turning away. It's always good in life if you have more clients than you can handle. So right now, we are building a huge convention and exhibition centre."
In 2010, the Ryder Cup was held at Celtic Manor and while it was a major event for the hotel and for Mr Matthews, it was completely overshadowed by the 2014 Nato security summit which was also held there.
More than 70 political leaders, including US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attended the summit.
This is when the incongruous sight of a fighter plane parked on the 17th fairway happened.
"Not only that, there was a tank parked on the golf course. I said to the commander that if you want to put a tank on the gold course, then I want a driver who's very careful, I don't want the green to be chewed up. He replied: 'Terry, when you have a 30-tonne vehicle with tracks, you can be as delicate as you like but it's going to chew up the ground!'," Mr Matthews says with a smile.
He adds that there was something even more funny or spectacular, depending on how you look at it.
An Osprey plane, which can land like a helicopter by flipping its engines to vertical position, landed on a fairway.
"Holy cow, did it ever burn the earth and grass on the driving hole with those two huge engines! Two great big pocked areas appeared, each up to 10 feet deep."
Fortunately the hotel has 700 ground staff to look after the golf courses and so, after the summit, everything was cleaned up.
Mr Matthews adds: "Five thousand media people came over. The Ryder Cup was big too but only 500 media people came. They had a 14.2 km high tension fence around the property which was guarded by 9,000 military and police personnel.
"The Celtic Manor was on the hill overlooking the Bristol Channel and there was an aircraft carrier stationed in the channel along with 14 destroyers. There was a fighter jet and a tank on the fairway and there was an aircraft carrier within looking distance. The good news is, at the end of the day, nobody got hurt!"
Now in his early 70s, Mr Matthews has no intention of retiring.
"My philosophy is 'don't stop till you drop'. And even if you drop, you can't be certain, you get up and have another go. Building businesses is enjoyable and if you don't help the next generation, you don't have a future."
He was in Singapore recently to explore opportunities of starting up new businesses with the same unique formula of empowering young people with ownership of what they work for.
"I'm here to start companies because the graduates are so well educated. I'll be putting up money to start up companies and there will be opportunities for people to invest. The young people that are being educated here are excellent; now they may not be organised for commercial success but there's nothing wrong with their education."
He adds that with the average population in this region getting wealthier, the market here is growing.
"But you need to become global as well because if you are not, you are going to die. You may have the best technology in the world in a particular sector but if it is sold only in a few countries as opposed to somebody who does not have as good a technology but is selling throughout the world, then they get the first mover advantage. When you come along and say 'I have better stuff and at lower cost', you still cannot get in. Going global is a must."
The man who starts companies for relaxation has no intention of slowing down, with almost 40 per cent of his time spent on travelling.
"I could have retired in the 1980s when I became a very wealthy person. It took me about 10 minutes lying on a beach with a margarita to realise that I couldn't take 'retirement' any more - it was driving me nuts!"
This article was first published on January 10, 2015.
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