The secret of joy in work is contained in one word — excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it. – Pearl S. Buck

Among the principles espoused by Confucius (not his original) was the credo known as the Golden Rule: “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself”.

He also championed strong family loyalty, ancestor veneration, and respect of elders by their children and of husbands by their wives. He also recommended family as a basis for ideal government.

Raised by parents who themselves were entrepreneurs, the Chin brothers, Peter and Robert, easily acquired – and ultimately applied – those Confucian values that have served their forebears for centuries.

Not that the brothers could be regarded as ascetics, locked in austerity. But even while they were working with other firms, there was a vision for something else, and they knew that “something else” would require a level of dedication and focus.

Just how much of those qualities would soon be revealed as the financial sector meltdown of the mid-90s took hold. With financial houses, known and upstart, collapsing like dominoes, it might have seemed the last imaginable time to start an investment firm.

But the Chins were able to attract investors, so much so that the company’s asset base had moved past $200 million in the first month, and funds under management had topped $1billion at the end of the first year.

Ever modest, the brothers put this down to “investor confidence and prudent management” but confidence, that most valuable and ineffable of currencies, is never given lightly. Just how did they earn it?

“By maintaining our focus on areas that we know would give good returns rather than jumping into things that were speculative and about which we didn’t know,” Robert says. This “dare to be conservative” model was just what the sector was missing at the time, and savvy individual and corporate investors who still have their shirts on their backs (and more) started joining their counterparts who had already chosen Alliance.

From those auspicious beginnings, the pair have carefully built the business, strategically adding new business lines and expanding their footprint, creating opportunities for bright young minds to join the firm.

All of which reflects the founders’ own thinking. “We essentially try to find people, not say they’re robotic, but people who think like us” Peter says. “In the sense that they have the focus and dedication to service, to doing the things that have helped us earn and keep our clients.”

And they have kept those clients, to the tune of 90% or more over the years. And the testimonials are uniformly glowing – and genuine. They can’t get enough of how it feels to step in the Alliance offices, and several of them clearly hang around long after their “official” business is concluded.

It is said success is a greater test than adversity, and it’s a test that the Alliance founders were able to pass. “We always had reinvestment as a priority” says Peter Chin. “We saw that as the only way to build the business and make it sustainable.”

Perhaps the deepest of the Confucian principles is personal exemplification over explicit rules of behaviour; in other words, “do as I do, not as I say” In this lies the essence of the Alliance Investment model – excellence without excuse, integrity without compromise, and pride without arrogance.

Simple.

And after 20 years, it’s still working. (AIM)