试水缅甸的香港家族企业 From Hong Kong to Myanmar
Before his death in 1996, the Hong Kong textile tycoon Law Ting-pong handwrote a letter of wishes in which he expressed the hope that “those who are careful at the beginning would also be careful to the end”.
在1996年去世之前，香港纺织业大亨罗定邦(Law Ting-pong)手写了一封意愿书，他在里面表达了一种愿望：“慎始者必慎于终”。
Unfortunately, the lack of careful wording in the informal will sparked a court battle between his six children over his HK$1bn estate that dragged on until 2011.
不幸的是，由于这份非正式遗嘱的措辞不严谨，他的6位子女围绕他留下的10亿港元财产打起了官司，一直折腾到2011年。
Now, with the row settled, his 37-year-old grandson Bosco Law is trying to live out the exhortation to cautious living in his role as chief executive of Lawsgroup, the family’s mini-conglomerate, which spans clothes manufacturing, retail and property.
如今，官司已了结，他的37岁孙子罗正杰(Bosco Law,上图)作为家族所有的小型企业集团、业务涵盖服装制造、零售和房地产的罗氏集团(Lawsgroup)的行政总裁，正试图践行上述关于谨慎为人处世的箴言。
“My grandfather had a saying that we should be very conservative but also aggressive,” says Mr Law, speaking at the company’s headquarters in a busy commercial area of the Kowloon district in Hong Kong.
罗正杰在罗氏集团位于香港繁忙的商业区九龙的总部表示：“我的祖父曾说过，我们应该既保守又大胆。”
He explains the apparent conflict: the phrase means eschewing complicated financial products such as currency derivatives but taking an adventurous approach to expanding the core business of sewing T-shirts and knitting sweatshirts for retail customers including Gap, JC Penney and Uniqlo. “The manufacturing environment is ever changing so you always have to have a changing mindset to survive,” he says.
他解释这种明显的矛盾说：这句话的意思是回避汇率衍生品等复杂的金融产品，但大胆开拓核心业务：为Gap、JC Penney和优衣库(Uniqlo)等零售客户生产T恤和针织运动衫。他表示：“制造业环境不断变化，你必须拥有一种随时应变的心态才能存活。”
He declines to release any figures indicating the size of the company but as evidence of its ambitions, cites its recent expansion into Myanmar, which has attracted much attention but where few investors are willing to take the plunge.
他拒绝公布任何表明该公司规模的数据，但作为该公司雄心的证据，他谈到了最近罗氏集团向缅甸扩张；缅甸吸引了大量关注，但几乎没有投资者愿意冒险。
Always searching for cheaper labour, Lawsgroup opened its first factory there last year and employs more than 2,000 people making T-shirts two hours’ drive north of Yangon, the commercial capital. “Opening a new factory is always tough,” says Mr Law. “Everything is new in Myanmar. Even if you talk to the [government’s] commerce department, they don’t really know the policy.. is a guess, everything is grey.”
始终在寻找更廉价劳动力的罗氏集团，去年在缅甸商业之都仰光以北两小时车程外的地方开设了第一家缅甸工厂，雇用了2000多人生产T恤。“开办新厂总是很难的，”罗正杰表示，“在缅甸，一切都是新的。即便你与（缅甸政府）商务部洽谈，他们也并不真正了解政策……一切都靠猜测，一切都是灰色的。”
Politics is a further uncertainty, with talks about forming a new government taking place between opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the ruling military after her party won November’s election. “Who knows what will happen? But still, if we have a 70 per cent chance [of success] we will go for it.”
政治加剧了不确定性，在反对党领导人昂山素季(Aung San Suu Kyi)领导的政党赢得11月选举后，昂山素季正与执政的军政府商谈成立一个新政府。“谁知道会发生什么呢？但如果我们有70%的（成功）几率，我们就会全力以赴。”
While the business is much smaller than the conglomerates built by Hong Kong tycoons such as Li Ka-shing and Lee Shau-kee, Lawsgroup’s combination of entrepreneurial endeavour and conservatism is typical of the approach that built the city’s dominant family businesses. Many started with humdrum businesses such as small-scale factories or retail stores before parlaying profits and connections into diversified business empires.
尽管罗氏集团的规模远远不及李嘉诚(Li Ka-shing)和李兆基(Lee Shau-kee)等香港大亨创建的综合企业，但该集团结合了企业家精神和保守主义，这是打造香港占主导地位的家族企业的典型方式。很多家族企业从沉闷单调的业务起步，例如小工厂和零售店，然后借助利润和人脉，打造起多元化业务的商业帝国。
Lawsgroup, which employs about 20,000 people in Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, Myanmar and Vietnam, was founded as a textile manufacturer by Law Ting-pong in 1975 in the heyday of the “made in Hong Kong” boom. Like other Hong Kong clothes makers, it soon moved into the mainland to take advantage of low wages, a huge workforce and the opening-up of China from the late 1970s.
1975年，在“香港制造”热潮的最鼎盛时期，罗定邦创建了一家纺织工厂。如今，罗氏集团在孟加拉国、中国内地、香港、缅甸和越南雇用逾2万名员工。与其他香港服装生产商一样，当年该集团在成立后不久进军中国内地，以利用内地的各种优势：薪资低廉、劳动力众多、中国从上世纪70年代末开始实行改革开放。
Its expansion there took off only after 2005, when quotas on imported textiles in Canada, the EU and the US finally ended. That year, Mr Law joined the family business after studying architecture in Toronto and working for an architects’ firm and a bank.
罗氏集团的真正扩张是在2005年之后才开始的，当时加拿大、欧盟(EU)和美国的纺织品进口额度最终取消。也正是在那一年，罗正杰加盟家族企业，此前他曾在多伦多学习建筑，并曾供职于一家建筑师事务所和一家银行。
Lawsgroup was listed in Hong Kong in 1987 and a separate property and retail arm spun off into their own listings before the main holding group was taken private in 1998.
罗氏集团曾于1987年在香港上市，后来旗下房地产和零售部门分拆上市，成为一个独立实体，而主要控股集团在1998年被收归私有。
Mr Law, who describes his management style as “firefighting” when necessary, rather than micromanaging, says his main interest is fashion. That much is clear from his quirky outfit of flowery sneakers, grey trousers and a green blazer with a robot-shaped brooch.
罗正杰形容自己的管理风格是在必要时“救火”，而不是事事都要过问的微观管理。他表示，他的主要兴趣是时装。这从他标新立异的装束上就能明显看出：花帆布鞋、灰色裤子、一件绿色西装，上面别着一枚机器人形状的胸针。
A laid-back figure who rarely gives interviews, Mr Law insists he was not parachuted into his job by dint of some family succession plan but he notes that running a family-owned company has advantages.
神色悠闲的他很少接受采访，他坚称，他不是凭借某个家族接班计划“空降”到这个职位的，但他指出，打理一家家族企业具备几个优势。
“You can make your decisions faster and you can follow your will and passion, but you have to take full responsibility because it’s also your money.” Yet, pushed on whether he feels pressure to maintain and enhance a rich legacy, as in many Chinese family-owned companies, he brushes off the question. “I run the business just like a hobby,” he says. “I’m pushing my vision and I like doing branding and marketing.”
“你可以更快做出决定，你可以追随自己的意愿和激情，但你必须承担全责，因为这也是你的钱。”然而，在被问到在保持和增强丰富精神遗产（就像很多中国家族企业那样）方面是否感受到压力时，他没有理会这个问题。“我经营这家企业就像是一份自己的爱好，”他表示，“我在推动我的愿景，我喜欢做品牌推广和营销。”
Perhaps he does not feel the weight of family expectations so heavily because his father’s siblings run their own businesses, from Crystal Group, a leading clothing manufacturer, to the Park Hotel group and Bossini, the low-cost clothing retailer that made his grandfather famous in Hong Kong.
或许他不觉得家族期望的负担很重，因为他父亲的兄弟姐妹们在经营着自己的企业，从领先服装制造商晶苑集团(Crystal Group)到百乐酒店(Park Hotel)以及当年让他的祖父在香港声名鹊起的低成本服装零售商堡狮龙(Bossini)。
Mr Law’s focus is on managing Laws-group’s moves into new markets. With factory workers in the manufacturing heartland of Guangdong taking home more than $500 a month, Lawsgroup is expanding in countries where wages are less than half the cost, such as Myanmar, Vietnam and Bangladesh.
罗正杰的焦点是管理罗氏集团进军新市场的项目。鉴于制造业腹地广东的工厂员工现在每月收入超过500美元，罗氏集团正在扩张进入薪资水平不到中国一半的国家，如缅甸、越南和孟加拉国。
The death of basic manufacturing in China has long been prophesied, but Mr Law believes big producers will keep a presence there because of the scale and infrastructure advantages, as well as technical expertise.
多年来一直有人预测中国内地基础制造业的末日将要来临，但罗正杰认为，大型厂商将继续在那里保留一部分业务，原因在于规模效益、基础设施优势和技术专长。
“Most of our research and development is in China, where we do our industrial engineering and have developed our own IT system for quality control,” he says. “We do our factory line planning and training videos in China and then have the whole package sent overseas for them to follow.”
“我们的大部分研发位于中国内地，我们在那里开展工业工程并开发我们自己的质量控制IT系统，”他表示，“我们在内地制作生产线计划和培训视频，然后把整套体系搬到海外让它们效仿。”
Mr Law’s responses are sometimes so relaxed it is hard to tell if he is blasé, unflappable or evasive.
罗正杰的回答有时如此放松，以至于很难辨别他是不感兴趣、冷静还是在回避问题。
Asked if he worries about his safety after his cousin Queenie Law was kidnapped for ransom last year, he says “it’s just a single case”. Is he concerned about the disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers whose store sold works critical of China’s top leaders? “It’s just a single case”.
在被问及在他的胞妹罗君儿(Queenie Law)去年被绑架后，他是否担心自己的安全时，他表示：“那只是个案”。他是否担心5名香港书商消失事件？（这些书商所在的书店销售批评中国高层领导人的图书。）他的回答是“那只是个案”。
Like most Hong Kong businessmen with interests in mainland China, he is reluctant to be drawn into discussions about politics but his attitude might also point to a deeper self-confidence. Free from the vicissitudes and pressures of equity markets, conservative family companies such as his find it easier to endure difficult times.
与多数在中国内地有生意的香港商人一样，他不愿卷入有关政治的讨论，但他的态度可能还表明他有着更深层次的自信。罗氏集团这样的保守型家族企业不受时代变迁和股市压力影响，往往更容易挺过艰难时期。
On the day of the interview, Chinese stock and currency markets were again ridden with turbulence, and global investors were jittery about the prospects for the world’s second-biggest economy. Unlike some other manufacturers, Lawsgroup has not taken out hedges against renminbi volatility but Mr Law prefers to concentrate on the fundamental business.
在采访当天，中国内地股市和汇市再次陷入动荡，全球投资者对世界第二大经济体的前景感到紧张。与其他一些制造商不同，罗氏集团没有针对人民币汇率波动进行对冲操作，罗正杰更喜欢关注基础业务。
“We’ve been doing this for 40 years. It’s a downtrend right now so we have to buckle up. I’m still confident about Hong Kong and China in the long term.”
“我们已经做了40年。现在处于下行趋势，因此我们必须系好安全带。长期而言，我仍对香港和中国内地有信心。”
