Monday Face: Lui Che-woo

If you are not familiar with the industry, don't do the business - so goes the Chinese idiom intended as a warning to potential entrepreneurs not to start a business in unfamiliar industry and so avoid failure.

But for every rule, there must be an exception, and young, intrepid Lui Che-woo defied cautionary wisdom and successfully embraced every business opportunity that chance threw his way.

Now 83 and chairman of KWah Group, he forged a multinational conglomerate with interests in property, entertainment, leisure, hospitality and the supply of construction materials.

As a result of his contribution to the business development of Hong Kong, he was bestowed with a Grand Bauhinia Medal last Saturday.

Lui and his driving ambition got off to a fast start. He began in the car-parts industry and, by the early 1950s, he learned that rock-breaking machines and trucks used by US forces in Okinawa, Japan, were for sale. He jumped at the chance, imported the machinery and made what he called his first "first pot of gold".

He founded the first company in what went on to become KWah Group, and put the machines to use mining the mountains in Hong Kong for construction materials, quickly becoming one of the major construction materials suppliers in the city.