How to start from the top and stay there

Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) CEO Eugene Ellis arrived in the Philippines when the political cauldron was near boiling – July 8, the day many quarters thought President Arroyo would not last the day at Malacanang.

Still, the man who "raised his hand" to volunteer for the post of SCB Philippines CEO was undaunted. "I love challenges. Which is one of the reasons why I’m sitting in the Philippines today," he smiles.

Eugene is no stranger to challenges. He grew up in Hyderabad in Central India and had a privileged education at the St. George’s School, a Church of England school. An irony, since Eugene belonged to a devout Catholic family. Still the education served him well, for he would one day train with an English bank. He proceeded to major in Commerce and Economics at the University of Delhi, where he graduated in 1974.

After working in a New Delhi bank, then newly married Eugene (he and his wife Maria have now been married for 33 years!) decided in 1975 to try his luck in Dubai, where his wife had some relatives.

With $8 in his pocket, he took his first ride on a 747 from Delhi to Dubai and was dazzled by its luxury. When offered a drink by the flight attendant, he immediately ordered a Heineken and almost fell off his seat, seatbelt and all, when he was later presented with a $2-bill.

"Now, two of my eight dollars have just vanished, drastically cutting my wealth in one fell swoop and I haven’t even landed in Dubai!" Eugene recalls.

Then, an in-flight movie was announced and the flight attendant passed around headsets. Wiser in the ways of the world now, Eugene asked first if the headset came free of charge. He was told it cost $2.50.

"I politely passed on the headset. I watched the movie in silence." Otherwise, the flight was uneventful.

In Dubai, Eugene submitted his resumé to several banks, and got a response from at least two. He decided to cast his luck with SCB, then known as Chartered Bank.

His first assignment brought him to the top – literally. It was an assignment fit for one with a burning ambition.

Eugene was asked to go to the bank’s attic, where 30 years’ worth of documents – stained by bird droppings, as birds flew in through the vents – were stored. He sorted through the documents in the sweltering heat (50 degrees) in order to determine which needed to be filed and which were ready for the incinerator (for in those days, they had no shredders yet). Before the documents went up in flames, Eugene had a chance to pore through them and he discovered a treasure trove of information that was as rich as Solomon’s mines. He discovered lots of background material that helped him understand the bank and chart his progress in it. Information, after all, is power.

"It took me three months! I read a lot of confidential stuff from the files. I labeled them. I would never have had such an exposure if I didn’t go through those documents. (As a result), I had an encyclopedic knowledge of the bank. Later, when they would ask me, ‘Where’d you learn all these from, of course, I’d never tell them’."

So next time your boss gives you a task that doesn’t make sense to you, just give it a try. Who knows, he is (wittingly or unwittingly) giving you the password to his own post.

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During his first few days in Manila, Eugene would sometimes saunter past political rallies along Ayala Avenue as he walked from his hotel to his office a few blocks down the road. "If I did not open my mouth," admits the Indian-born, England-trained, Australian national, "people would just think I was a local."

So it was business as usual for Eugene, who was at SCB Australia where he was CEO of Wholesale Banks for five years prior to his Manila post.

"Philippine politics is not a problem as people make it. In commerce, we will always have political ups and downs. In a business world, one which we are looking for is stability with whoever is in charge. We don’t seek affinity to any party. In Standard Chartered bank offices in 56 countries, we do not get involved in local politics."

It seems to be a formula that has worked for the 150-year-old bank, which has been in the Philippines for 133 years now. Among its first clients, as evidenced by a request for a money order sent to his mother, was National Hero Jose Rizal. An impressive 88 percent of the SCB group’s total profits last year came from its Southeast Asia offices – the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.

Eugene gives a tip or two to businessmen who bellyache about the political situation as the hindrance to their progress: Just don’t mess with it.

"The only impact the government has on our office is in the area of tax. Why I’m really not concerned with all the political situation is because I respect all the politics. Life goes on," he shrugs.

Eugene admits the Philippine economy "is not stable as an economy" and hopes the future will be as clear and solid as the Taj Mahal on a clear day. "What we’re saying is we want some certainty for the future. We want medium-to-long term views, like this is where economy is going. This is where you expect it to be. Today, we cannot properly view such."

Eugene’s focus is to build on his predecessors’ gains (about five years ago, the bank was in the negative and a female CEO turned it around), and if possible to double the gains even on a not-so-clear day.

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It has been 30 years since Eugene Ellis rolled up his white shirt sleeves and sorted out musty documents in the sweltering heat of a bank’s storeroom. He has made his way from the top of the bodega to the top of the corporate ladder. In Dubai, he was assigned to various management positions in Operations, Foreign Exchange, Accounts, Loans and Branch banking. Thereafter, he assumed other management positions in Controllership, Treasury, Credit, International Trade and Trade Finance in Sydney, Australia.

"The bank has been very good to me. All these years, I have progressed. There was a  time, unless you’re English or Scottish, you didn’t get anywhere. The bulk of employees were Asian because the bank opened in Asia. But the executives were British. And it was a tough one to break into. Today, we are totally blind on nationalities – we employ 86 nationalities. We are very multicultural. But when I joined the bank in 1975, it was tough to get in."

The father of two young men who are both pursuing post-grad studies, Eugene has a very democratic management style. He values and listens to the expertise of his management committee, majority of whose members are Filipino. "I don’t run the bank, the managing committee does."

 He gets his inside info – no longer from bird poo-stained documents in the attic – but from being "one of the boys" during smoking breaks he takes outside the office building. There, he gets the real score about what’s happening in the bank.

His wife Maria, whom he describes a "person with a big heart," likes life in Manila and is already enamored with one sampaguita vendor that she wants to adopt the little boy!

Perhaps another secret to Eugene’s success, both in his career and his marriage, is that he has learned how to "sign off" from work, especially during weekends.

Now, I wonder if he learned that, too, from the documents in the bank’s attic?

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