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- [00:00]
A
Good evening. Welcome to this LSE Ideas special event tonight. I'm Orne Westard. I'm the director of LSE Ideas. And it's a great pleasure and honor for me to introduce one of LSE's great alumni, Tanzanly Dr. Tony Fernandez, who among other things is the founder and CEO of AirAsia. But Tony has also been doing a lot of other things. He's worked in the music industry, he's worked in, I shouldn't call it the racing industry, that wouldn't be right. But just to mention Team Lotus and people would certainly connect that to Tony. He's someone who has taken his LSE education and brought it very far in terms of what he has achieved. He's been one of the people who've really been linking up the Southeast Asian region and beyond. Not just through his emphasis on commercial ventures, first and foremost, of course AirAsia, the first very successful budget carrier within the region, but also because of his great involvement in the ASEAN process and in terms of the social and economic concerns of the region. He is someone who the LSC is really very proud to combs among its numbers. And we're looking forward to listening to his presentation today. Is ASEAN still relevant? And after Tony's presentation we will have time for questions and answers. So do stay around for that. Tony, it's a great pleasure to welcome you back to your alma mater to dlsc.
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B
Thank you. Hi everyone. Thanks for coming. I'm not really sure what the presentation says, so I'll just wing it as we go along. But I'm going to talk a little bit about AirAsia and how that links in to ASEAN and how we saw the whole potential of ASEAN from there and then talk a little bit about asean. And I'm a big supporter of the whole ASEAN thing. Firstly, I'd like to give this man a free ticket to wherever he wants to go in the world because he has a Queen's Park Rangers scarf. So where would you like to fly? You'll tell me later. Okay. Because I'm extremely happy because yesterday was the. After two and a half years of suffering as Queen Park Rangers chairman, we won three nil yesterday, which is the largest victory I've had since I've owned the club. It happens to be in the championship, but still, I'll take that victory. Anyway, here goes my background just before we go into it. I mean, I'm going to try and show you. Creating ideas and doing different things and looking at new markets in terms of your own careers going forward is an exciting time to be in Southeast Asia. I was an accountant. I hated accountancy. And after about five months, I wrote to every record company because I was a musician to see if I could get a job. Everyone told me to go to hell, except one, which was Virgin. And I happened at that time. Richard Branson happened to be there at the time, and he saw something in me and gave me a job which I never should have had. He then one day said he's going to start an airline. And I said, what drugs are you taking to do this? And he said, no, I'm convinced that there is an opportunity here. I knew he didn't have enough money to do that and he'd have to sell the record company. So I left and joined Warner Music. I was right in that he sold Virgin Records. Where I was wrong is that Virgin people took over EMI. And I had 12 years in music in Warner Music, signing bands such as Aha and the Cause. You're all too young. Maybe not all of you front row here. Who would have heard of some of these bands? And you know, I was at Warner Communications. I went through three mergers at Warner. I started at Warner, it became Time Warner, and the final merger was aol. And it's funny how you make a career on a couple of things. I was summoned to Rockefeller Plaza, which was the home of Time Warner, and the owners of AOL were giving us their vision of what AOL Time Warner would be. And I was thinking to myself, these guys are completely nuts listening to it. And I made my career on one statement. Steve Case was the owner. Steve said to me, what do you reckon our stock price should be in a year's time? This is in 2001. And time on a stock price was $80. And we were coming up with terms like EBITDA, earnings before everything you don't like. And calling it cash flow, that happens to be like 8 billion in the balance sheet for debt. And I thought, God having listened to you, if it's $80 in a year's time, you're doing well. But I knew I couldn't say that. So I said, $90. And he went wrong. Boy, $500. And I thought, these guys are completely crazy. So I went out of the room. I sold my stock options. I didn't have very many for $78, I think it was. And I went to my boss and I said, I quit. I don't believe in the vision. I don't want to be a hypocrite and take your salary. And criticized the company. He was thrilled because he always wanted to get rid of me. He thought I was after his job, which I was. And so he paid me before I could change my mind and I left. It's funny, if you look at the stock price of Time Warner now, it's about. They dropped AOL from the name. It's about $30, 11 years on and actually they sold AOL. And I had no idea what I was going to do. So I flew from New York to London, where I spent many, many years here. And I feel quite comfortable here. And I was sitting in a bar having a Ribena and contemplating the rest of my life. And I saw Stelios of EasyJet on television and he was talking about he was running down British Airways, something I never do with my national carrier, especially as the former chairman sitting up there. And I thought, wow, this sounds interesting. Low cost carriers. And I always liked the idea of planes. And if we had longer, I'll tell you a story of how I got interested in planes. And I went to Luton Airport and I saw people flying to Barcelona for eight pounds and Paris for six pounds. And I thought, wow, what an amazing concept. And everything was orange and people generally seemed happy. And I thought, I'm going to do this. Now, there's a very fine line between brilliance and stupidity. It's very, very, very narrow. But I thought, Well, I was 34 at the time, or 35, I can't remember the exact age. I said, I'm going to build it. And I thought of asean. It was my first thought. I thought if I could get people flying for less than 10 pounds to Bangkok and Jakarta and Bali, there's 600 million people in that market. What an amazing market we could do. And everyone in Asia at that time was talking about China and India. But I saw an amazing market sitting in our backyard in, in Southeast Asia, which we now know as asean. And that was it. I just said, I'm going to start an airline. I had zero experience, about $150,000 to my name and an idea. I won't go through the whole process, but I start off on that. As you're all entering, well, not all of you, but many of you are entering into your ending LSE and going to do different things. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do what you want to do. Live your life and live your dreams, because you have one life and you might as well give it a try. And if you fail, you fail. But at least you tried. You don't want to sit there at 55 and say I wish I could have done that. And that's kind of what I've always done. I've just done it and generally it's worked out. I won't tell you all the numerous failures I've had, but I have no regrets because if you don't try, you don't know. So I'm not sure how this works actually. This is a little bit high tech. We're a low cost airline after all. I press this arrow. Let's try that. No, how do I move this presentation forward the keyboard?
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Aha.
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I know, I'm back in LSE now.
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Yeah, exactly.
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You're actually low tech. Okay, first of all, Professor Danny Kua gave me this topic. I think ASEAN is very, very relevant. But I just want to talk to you a little bit in context of AirAsia. Because that's a real living example of what ASEAN can be when you put it together. Not easy, lots of pitfalls. But what we've created is something special and I think that shows the power of asean. I haven't seen this presentation. That was the day we took over AirAsia. Me and Cameroon, both of us from the music business, Zero Experience. We signed AirAsia three days before 9 11. Welcome to the aviation business. We bought it for one Malaysian ringgit, which is about 20 pence depending on the currency of the day. And between me and Cameroon we had half a million dollars. We had remortgaged our house and whatever savings we had. We board AirAsia with two planes and 254 terrified staff because they were owned by quite a big Malaysian conglomerate called DRB hicom. And it was taken over by two guys from the music business who they'd seen on television, on music shows. So not a very convincing story. But we had a dream and we had a dream of making ASEAN a smaller place. And the one statistic that came to my mind, it's a great place to talk about it, was that only 6% of Malaysians flew before we came on. And we saw what we learned at this wonderful institution was a classic elasticity theory. When you bring down the price, there is more demand. And that's exactly what we've done. That was the old AirAsia. It was like most airlines after some form of animal. We have tigers, we have lions in Asia, we have insects, we have all kinds of things.
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And.
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I have to change your presentation because the ex Malaysian Airlines Chairman is here, otherwise I would have said something else. And we decided first thing, I know this is not is ASEAN relevant, but I want to Give you as many of my business experiences as well. One of the first things we noticed was branding was weak. And whatever you do going forward, people always forget the value of branding and the value of building a brand. And it has relevance to this ASEAN thing was we want to be known as an ASEAN airline. But the very first thing, we looked at this and we said, wow, there's so many colors and there's a bird. So many different images. So we dropped the blue and the green. We dropped the bird and we moved it into a red airline as such, which looks a lot better than that. Please ignore the stewardesses. But assuming it was one color, we used AirAsia as the logo. Now we thought about why have two images? Why have a bird and the logo? We said, we'll just focus on one image, which is AirAsia. And if you think of the biggest brands in the world, Coca Cola, you only think of the Coca Cola italics. If I say Nike, you're only thinking of the Swoosh. So we decided to drop the bird and focus on AirAsia. And we've had an amazing growth. And this is all coming out of ASEAN. We started with two planes 11 years ago and 200,000 passengers. And in the last 12 years, we've gone from two planes to 150 planes and we've gone from 200,000 passengers. This year we'll carry 44 million passengers. And that's all new market. We haven't taken away anyone's market. People who are flying on MAS still fly on mas. People who fly on Singapore Airlines still fly in Singapore Airlines. But we've created a whole new market that just wasn't there before by reducing the prices. And 50% of our destinations are within ASEAN of routes that were never done before. So the key is we saw a massive market in Southeast Asia which was just not being utilized or being seen by anyone else. And so we went out there and grabbed it. Through this and in that growth, we've had everything known to mankind that could have gone wrong. We had 9, 11, we've had bird flu, we've had SARS, we've had tsunamis, we've had earthquakes. We've had quasi revolutions in Thailand. We've had national carriers trying to put us out of business. We've had, I'll stop there. But we always found a way. We always found a way and marketing was one of our key aspects. And we always knew that where there were people there, we had a product. We would always find a market during sars. No one wanted to fly during sars. I don't know if you remember sars, but everyone thought they were going to die if they got on a plane. So I told my marketing team every airline was cutting flights, they were grounding their planes. And I said, no, we've got to fight this. There must be a market out there. And there's 600 million people in ASEAN. People will fly. So I said, triple our marketing budget. And we did triple our budget. And I said, I know Malaysians very well. If you put a fare low enough, they will risk their lives. Okay, At 600 ringgit, no, I'm going to die at 60 ringgit, who cares? And true enough, we, and I'm sure it resonates with many Malaysians here, we didn't fill our planes, but we made enough to make money. And we were the only airline that never cancelled flights during the Bali bomb. No one wanted a flight to Bali. And so I told my team, no, we can't abandon Bali now. We've made tons of money. This is when they need us most. We will not cancel a flight. So we came up with Love Bali campaign. And the day after the bomb, everyone was trying to cancel their flight. So we came up with this Love Bali and we gave away 5,000 free seats. And again, my countrymen, Malaysians didn't let me down. 5,000 free seats. No one in Malaysia cared about the bombs anymore. They were going shopping and we sold the 5,000 free seats in less than an hour. Now the beauty of that, and it's a little bit of a marketing lesson here is us Malaysians, when we get a good deal, we will tell 10,000 people about it. So the 5,000 tickets, they went to Bali, they came back, they had a great time. They told at least 5 million people that Bali was fine and they had a great time. And we never cancelled the flight to Bali and we were honored by the Balinese government, etc. And so there's always an opportunity and we constantly see this all the time. We're now doing a massive operation in the Philippines where obviously you've all seen the pictures and again, we're the only airline that has continued flights to Tacloban and continued creating an economy there for them to bounce back. So there's always opportunities here. And that's the great thing about asean. There's tremendous diversity, there's tremendous opportunity in terms of creating new markets. Bandung. No one flew to Bandung. I knew Bandung because when I was in the music business, I was the Dundut King and we recorded all our Dung Dut music in Bandung So I said, why don't we fly there? And no one could really answer me. So I said, let's fly there. And most people laughed at us. And Today we have 32 flights a day to Bandung and every other airline has followed us in. So there's tremendous market. Another example is not in asean, Macau. No one flew to Macau before we did from Southeast Asia. I remember we did cheeky advertising. We said, at least you have a low fare to take you home when you lose all your money in the casinos. And now we have 20 flights a day. So that's the beauty of a place like ASEAN, is that it was not chartered. A lot of it was new. It was an adventure for us going to these new markets and creating new routes. But it was a very resilient market and had 600 million people in it, which I keep going back to. So anyone who thinks it isn't relevant, it's very, very relevant just by the sheer size of people, right? And we've really gone out to build an ASEAN brand. I think there are very few now. People are beginning to emulate us. We went out there. We have started many airlines in ASEAN. We have AirAsia Thailand, we have AirAsia Indonesia, and we have AirAsia Philippines. And it's been tough to go and create that ASEAN brand because. Because there was no ASEAN brand. But if you look at our cabin crew or if you look at our pilots or if you look at our planes, you really can't tell the difference. And it's been not easy to get that across. It's sometimes easier for an American brand to come into Southeast Asia and say, this is my brand than a Malaysian brand going to Thailand and saying this is what we want to do. And it was hard work, but I was really maniacal about it. And so saying, we want to be one brand and we want to be one asean. And we were the first. It took me just to tell you that the length that plane with the ASEAN logo took me a year and a half to get ASEAN to actually agree to give us the logo. And this is us trying to promote ASEAN so that the barriers were tough. And when we went to Thailand, for instance, you know, everyone wanted Air Asia Thailand, they all wanted to do it differently from Malaysia, but they said it was different. But I said, no, if McDonald's is the same in Thailand and America, then AirAsia will be the same. And we were really quite maniacal about it. I remember the pilots in Thailand refused to go in the same bus as the cabin crew, they said it was beneath them to go in the same bus. In Malaysia. It's the other way around. The pilots refused to go in the bus unless the cabin crew were there. And I won't tell you what the Indonesians want. So how did I solve this? I sent over 10 Malaysian pilots to Thailand to show them the benefits of going in the same bus together. And net net. We had six Thai Malaysian marriages. So we were integrating ASEAN in more ways than one through this. But those are the lengths we had to go through to build this ASEAN brand. But the results have been fairly spectacular in doing this. And I believe within the next five years we will have an AirAsia in every part of ASEAN. We're already in discussions with very soon opening AirAsia, Cambodia and so on and so forth. And the amazing connectivity that we have provided and made ASEAN a much smaller place and created many, many small medium enterprises to build their businesses outside has been incredibly gratifying for us. And we went out to build a brand which again, build an ASEAN brand and build a brand around it. But for a small airline such as us with two planes to have gone from 200,000 to 44 million people in 11 years, we couldn't have done it without a lot of branding. So we used sport tremendously. We sponsored Manchester United. Very, very painful for me because I hate that football club, but you have to be a prostitute once in a while. And it was really funny, actually. We go about it. We had seven planes with a little tiny Malaysian airline and we sponsored Manchester United, which I reluctantly have to say is one of the biggest football clubs in the world and most successful football club. And I remember going to Old Trafford. Theatre of Dreams. I do hate that name. Let's go back to Old Trafford. And you know, we weren't interested in the football. We were more interested in seeing our name across the billboards. But that's how we were. We had a little. We were brave to go out there and build this brand. You know, we went out and sponsored the referees and it was us versus Emirates. And Emirates had like a gazillion dollars more than us. I remember going up to the Premier League and making a presentation saying, look, you've got to support this airline. We're asean. We've been watching Premier League football forever. And there's like one person in Dubai who watches football, maybe two, that made no real impact to the Premier League. And then I said, you've got to support us because we're a Malaysian airline and we've been fixing your Football games for the last 15 years led by Professor Kwa and they still didn't make any impact on that. And I finally said, look, I want to sponsor the red card. And he kind of looked at me and said, what do you mean you want to sponsor the red card? I said, I want to have airasia.com on the red card. And I say, you know, when Wayne Rooney gets sent off, that picture's all over the world. You'll see airasia.com and on the other side, he'll say, now you're suspended. Have a holiday with AirAsia, which they found incredibly funny. Look, whatever. We're going to support AirAsia because we love your style of doing things. And we sponsored the referees for three years, which was great. Until I took over QPR my first season, we had the most sendings off in one season and we dropped sponsoring the referees after that. But I keep going back to that. We there wasn't this ASEAN brand and we kept driving this ASEAN brand very hard and we kept working really hard in building our brand to what it is. So I keep going back to that one. The ASEAN brand is very important. I'm now talking to all the leaders and saying, why is the Sea Games called the Sea Games? Why isn't it called the ASEAN Games? And actually, no one can actually give me an answer. And that shows the level of what ASEAN has to do and create its relevance. What does ASEAN mean to the common man in asean? Very little. And so there's a tremendous amount of work to be done, but the prize is great. I'm a big believer in Europe. I'm sure there are many people here who probably don't agree with me and we won't go into that subject. But I'm all for ASEAN has been a fantastic political organization and now it needs to morph itself into an economic organization. And the power of one market is massive. For AirAsia to be able to deal with one aviation authority as opposed to 10 aviation authorities would reduce the cost of business, would reduce the fares, obviously, and increase the market. That's just one very simplistic view of having one market. And I think this is where we've been really successful. You can't go from two planes to 150 without talent. And that's what we've been damn good at doing. And ASEAN has an enormous talent pool and we haven't looked at conventional places to have trained talent. 2000 pilots. I've had to be unconventional. When I first started, I used to another management lesson. Maybe if there is One here. But I used to carry bags once a month. I used to be a cabin crew once every two months and once every three months I was a check in assistant because that was the hardest job in AirAsia. And I did it for two reasons. One, I wanted to find talent. Not everyone had money or scholarships to come to lse. And there were a lot of very, very bright kids in AirAsia who were much smarter than me, but just came from a different economic background. And second, I don't think you can be an effective CEO if you don't go down to the ground and understand what your job is. And I'll give you two examples. When I was carrying bags, we used to have a Boeing 737 just slightly lower than an Airbus, a couple of inches lower. And we used to throw the bags into the 737. I should not throw the bags in. Lovingly put the bags in. Nice bag, nice bag. And when the Airbus came in, we couldn't throw the bags in or lovingly put them in. My boy said, we need belt loaders. And I said, no, no, we can't afford belt loaders. It's going to cost, I think it was about three and a half million dollars at the time. I said, no, we just have to make do. So when I was next carrying bags, they put me on the Indonesian flights. Now people who generally fly with us bring their house. People who fly to Indonesia bring their neighbor's house as well. So I almost destroyed my back in the process that day. And I said, okay, I'm wrong, we'll go belt loaders tomorrow. And if I didn't do that, I would have made a wrong decision, probably created a lot of damaged backs and probably started a union. In our 12 years, we have no unions in AirAsia. It's one, I think it's one of our major successes. And anyone can start a union in Malaysia or Thailand, anywhere else in Southeast Asia. But we have a very tight family unit. We have 12,000 staff, everyone knows everybody, it's very transparent. And there's very lack of, there's no distrust. So there's no need for a union. The second reason for doing that was to look for talent. And when I found my, when I was carrying bags, I saw so many bright kids who just didn't have money for further education. And our first cadet pilot program, we opened it up to anyone. I said, I don't care whether you went to the LSE or also Cambridge or have A levels, O levels, I don't care if you want to Be a pilot and you have a brain. I will support you. And our first 11 pilots came from various parts of Southeast Asia, from Bandung, from Malaysia. We had one boy who was from Cebu, which is a town in East Malaysia, and he left school when he was 13 and he was super bright, really bright. And I said, you got to go be a pilot. And he said, I got no qualifications. I said, I don't care, you have a huge brain. And so we funded him to take the pilot's exams. And my pilots were great, they helped him out. And he got the top marks in Malaysian Flying Academy and got into Malaysian flying Academy. And 18 months later, of our first 19 cadets, 11 came from. There were baggage boys or store or some accountants, etc. Bookkeepers, and they became pilots. And this boy from Cebu has now become a captain. And he joined us to carry bags. You roll on. Seven years later, he's flying a brand new Airbus 320 as a captain. And that's been our strength. We've been able to develop people from nothing. We've been able to turn raw diamonds into diamonds. And that is one thing that many governments fail to see. The massive talent pool in Southeast Asia. And again, I'm a big believer in freedom of movement of labor and movement of capital, but we focus on labor. AirAsia could not have grown if we just looked at the traditional pool of talent and we were traditional in looking at how we got people. So the biggest asset Southeast Asia has and why it is so relevant is there's a massive, educated and huge talent pool that is unexploited and simple things were missed. There were no female pilots in Malaysia at the time. And I went to my chief pilot and said, why are there no female pilots? And he gave me the most ridiculous answer I have ever heard, which cannot be repeated. And I said, look, if a woman can run a country, she can certainly fly a plane. And now we have 44 pilots. And the other day was history. Captain was female, co pilot was female, all the cabin crew were female, and all the passengers are male. That last bit's not true, but it was a proud day for me. And again, here's one big talent pool that was just missed out. So we've looked at unconventional ways to get talent. And I'm here to say that we haven't just said, oh well, we're from Malaysia, so we'll just take Malaysians. We looked at Thais, we looked at Indonesians, we looked at people all over Southeast Asia to build this ASEAN brand. And I talked about that, and I've already talked about this, but of our destinations, 50% were destinations that were never done before. And you have to look at the geography of Southeast Asia. The beauty of ASEAN is if you look at America or Europe, yes, there are big differences in one part of Europe and another, but not as great as Southeast Asia. And the strength of ASEAN is its diversity. The strength of Malaysia is its diversity. When people fully realize that that is a strength, we could become very powerful. But asean, if you look at the difference between Thailand and Indonesia or foreign Philippines and Cambodia, it's very, very different. And that is a unique one opportunity which I think ASEAN needs to exploit and can be phenomenally powerful going forward. You have to go around London and look at the food that is offered from our part of the world in asean, whether it's Thai or Vietnamese or Malaysian. The variety is quite unique from one geography. And so there's tremendous opportunities in developing asean. I've talked about this already and I'll conclude with looking at this aec, this ASEAN Economic Community of which I'm a big believer now, there'll be many skeptics out there and say, well, will it happen, won't it happen, et cetera, it doesn't really matter. The fact is the roadmap is there and I think private industry has to drive it, companies have to drive it. Too. Many of us in Southeast Asia have waited for governments to do things. We're spoiled, we're spoon fed. And I think if we want to see change, we have to make change ourselves. And I create a lot of controversy by moving my regional office to Jakarta. And people said, oh, you're unpatriotic, you're this and all kinds of things. I was hammered in parliament in Malaysia and all kinds of crazy things. And I moved it purely to make a statement that because ASEAN Secretary General's office is in Jakarta. So I said, I'm an ASEAN brand, I want to be next to the ASEAN Secretary General's Office and influence change in asean. But it created enormous amounts of political tension in there. But, and there will be, it will continue to be, but if you wait for change, it'll never happen. And after we did this, CIMB did certain things and San Miguel in the Philippines did other things and the pace is going. So AEC will happen. There are some countries that are more proactive, some countries that are less. Some of the bigger countries say, why should I open up my market because I'm the biggest already. But as long as you keep propagating it, people will See the benefits of one market and the benefits of a mobile labor force. Do we all need 10 ports in every country? Do we need 10 mega airports in every country? These are all things that you question. Do we need 10 stock markets? Does it make more sense to have one ASEAN stock market? These are things that I've put forward to me make much more sense. You have one market. Someone who wants to invest in a company that represents ASEAN can go to it. But nationalism and all these things come in, but they will, but we don't give up. You keep pushing that boundary. So this is a view that I've taken. I'm a big believer in free flow goods, which I think ASEAN has done a fantastic job in. Tariffs are virtually zero in most things. But again tariffs are one way of making people flow feel good. I remove taxes, but then there's so many other impediments to really free trade. And so but you've got to keep making noise and you keep pushing and you finally get there. We're in the most regulated industry known to mankind. The aviation industry is a nightmare. I've got to deal with Malaysian Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, Garuda. Just saying all those names makes me feel rather ill. But you know, now we have a great relationship with Malaysian Airlines and we coexist, you know, 15 years ago, 12 years ago, I think that was never deemed possible. We still have a long way to go with Singapore Airlines and we have a good relationship with, with Thai, Thai International and we have a good relationship with Garuda. We can coexist, but it wouldn't have happened without a lot of effort. And so I believe in open market, free competition. I'm an old fashioned free marketeer. Let the consumer decide and let the consumer decide who is the best. And if you want to be the best, you can't be the best. Unless you're open to a free competition. You can't be the best in a protected market. I'm a big believer in freedom of human capital and movement of capital. I think that's a long, long way for asean, but we have to have aspirations for it. I know there's a lot of debate in Europe, but I think you really have to look at London and see the diversity of the labor force. And I think it's been good. I think one of the key goals for ASEAN would be to develop SMEs and allow them to have a bigger market. You know, if you're in Malaysia, you have a market of 30 million. If you look at the ASEAN market, you Have a market of 600 million, immediate benefit straight away. And I think we're much stronger in dealing with the larger economies of the world as one economy, as opposed to 10 separate economies, whether you're dealing with Europe, whether you're dealing with America, whether you're dealing with China. And I think from a political standpoint, which I learned today from the wise gentleman here, you know, I think China was rather surprised by the power of ASEAN in the Myanmar situation. And I think you see Philippines now gravitating towards ASEAN because of its tension in the South China Sea. So it's very relevant, but there's going to be loads and loads of potholes and problems along the way. But you don't start. You'll never get to that nirvana. And I think if we wait for governments to make change, we'll wait forever. Private industry and the common man has to drive that change. Things that we've, you know, I've already mentioned some of it, but in my own industry, open skies, you know, we still have to apply for routes rights in a lot of asean. We still have to apply to Singapore to get flights into Singapore. Singapore pretends to be the most open market in the world.
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World.
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B
But that's a fallacy completely. It is open as long as they're the best, but if someone competes with them, then they close it really very rapidly. And these are things that had to change. The mindset has to change. The mindset right now is that, well, I'm going to take a little bit of your market, but the mindset has to change. Well, yeah, you might share it, but there's a much bigger market out there. And that's been our philosophy going forward. Imagine I say, free movement of capital. We now pilots. I'm just giving an example in my own industry, 10 different aviation authorities to become a pilot. So a Cambodian pilot can only fly in Cambodia, a Malaysian pilot can only fly in Malaysia, and so on and so forth. In Europe, it's different. You have one, one European license and you can fly anywhere in Europe. You have one engineering authority. It allows, if one country is doing better and is shorter pilots, then they can go. That's a classic economic theory of supply and demand. But regulations and closing markets leads to huge inefficiencies. The rest are fairly open. You know, it's funny coming in, coming into Britain, I stopped by the border police. I was coming in from Paris just now and the border police said, why are you in Britain? I said, I've come to see Harry Redknapp. And they looked at me and like, what do you mean you come to see Harry Redknapp? I said, well, I own Queen's Park Rangers. And they went, no, you don't. Tony Fernandez does. I said, please look at my passport, sir. And he then took a picture with me. I hate borders. And to travel from one part of ASEAN to another is ridiculous. And there's not even an ASEAN line, actually. We just have to queue with everyone else. And so, you know, here we're talking about an Asian Economic Zone, but we can't even move without. In some countries we need a visa still. So there's a lot of work, as I keep saying. But I'm an optimist and as I said, it keeps being very relevant. As an ASEAN member, I can't own 100% of an airline in another country. I can own 49%. Ryanair can own 100% of an airline in Poland, God help them, but they can and we can't. We can only earn 49%. But that's where I say Europe. We have a lot to learn from Europe. I know that sounds weird and I am, as I said, a big believer in Europe. I wrote a long piece in the French press yesterday on the positive sides of Europe, and I think Europe is better together than it would be as in the independent countries. It's funny, I was in Renault because in my car project, we're making new cars together with Renault and my CEO is a Scotsman and Carlos Ghosn, and people slightly seemed to be upset with the United Kingdom for wanting to pull out of Europe and we're giving him a hard time. I said, no, that's all right. England may pull out, but Scotland's going to pull out of the UK and join the European Community. So it shows, really. There's still so much nationalism in Europe, though, it's been so positive. So there's a long, long way for us to go. But as I said, I'm a firm believer in single market concepts. And going back to the theme, ASEAN has to be relevant from its sheer size of number and its political and its geographic presence in the world. One day in ASEAN Parliament, can you imagine a situation with Lee Kuan Yew and Dr. Mahathe in the same parliament, and President Suharto and Aung SUU Kyi in the same parliament. Now, it's a scary thought, no doubt, but if all those brains work together, wow, pretty powerful. And that's a vision. Probably that won't happen in my lifetime, but as I said, ASEAN could be a very Very, very relevant player in the world market. It already is. And my example today of a guy who dreamt about an airline from two planes to now 150 and we've bought 500 of these planes is really due to being in a fantastic market with fantastic people. And I'll finish on a dream. I was sent to boarding school when I was 12 years old. My father came in one day and said, I'm sending you to school in England. Okay, sounds interesting concept. I'd never been to England in my life. And I was sent to Subang Airport to fly on Malaysian Airlines. And, and I had my unaccompanied miner's badge and it was Subang Airport, my most favorite airport in the world, which I'll never get to fly from. And those days there was no terrorism, et cetera, so you could wave to everyone. And half my village came to see me off. So I felt rather cool. I had my Samsonite bag full of instant noodles. I'm sure 30 years on nothing has changed. And I was packed off on this flight and I felt very cool. I was wearing my school uniform, et cetera. I arrived in Heathrow airport and even in the 70s it was massive. From the airport I left and the coolness had kind of worn off. And the first thing I thought, everyone's white here. I've never seen so many white people. I told my daughter, you'll have no such problem because, because when you arrive in Heathrow now they're all Indian so you'll blend in quite easily and they're going to regret ever inviting me now. And my father was a complete maniac, so he gave me £50 and I had to find my own way to my boarding school. And I took a Green Line bus 727 to Epsom and walked up from the bus station to my school. And I looked at this school and thought, Jesus, what have I done wrong in my life to have been sent to this school? And I called my mother up and there was no Internet and mobile, etc. So I'm old. Not as old as the MAS chairman, but old. I was putting in my 10 pence coins and I said, could I come home for half term? And she said, no, it's too expensive. And I said, one day I will make it cheap to fly from London. And she completely ignored my statement. But it was always in my mind. Low cost travel was always in my mind. I mean, I didn't know it as low cost travel at the time. And I used to go to Heathrow Airport I was a bit of a plane spotter and sit stand outside car park three and watch planes. And I was enamored with. Again, you're all too young. Well, most of you are. With an airline called Laker Airways, Sir Freddie Laker and how people were flying to New York. It was called sky bus for $59. I used to just stand there and watch people flying to New York for $59. I thought, wow, what an amazing concept. It was always in my mind. And then I went to the pub and I saw EasyJet, et cetera. I said, I'm gonna start this airline, but I wanted to start a long haul, low cost airline. And I met someone from ryanair called Connor McCarthy who became one of our partners. And he told me it's a stupid idea, long haul, low cost travel. Do a short haul one. So I said, okay, we'll do the short haul one. And that was AirAsia. But it was always in my mind. And I was sitting with Richard Branson. We were reliving art. He invited me to an 80s party. Of all the artists we signed in the 80s, there was Boy George was there and Duran Duran, Sex Pistols, Mike Allfield, et cetera. The guys here kind of understand. And we're sitting there, me and Richard were fairly drunk on the beach at Necker Island. And he said, hey, Tony, how come we haven't done a business together? And I said, generally, because you steal from everyone else and use everyone else's money. And we had a bit of a laugh about that.
- [49:19]
A
And.
- [49:22]
B
Just actually as a side product, people think I'm trying to be Richard Branson. I have zero interest in going to the moon. I have no interest in taking a balloon across the Atlantic Ocean. He's trying to persuade me to go on this Virgin Galactica flight. I said, now why would I want to do that? I could be at the LSE talking to all of you rather than watching Piece of Rock. But he's convinced that he's going to get me on his Virgin Galactica flight. So we're sitting there and he said, let's do something together. And I said, you know, I had this. It's always been in my mind, let's start this long haul, low cost airline. And that was AirAsia X. That's how AirAsia X started. And when AirAsia X started, I never flew on them. They went to Hangzhou and Brisbane and all these places. I never flew on them because I wanted my first flight to be London. And finally I persuaded the board to start London. And it was very Emotional for me because I went back to my old school and I got the taxi to pick me up from my house in Epsom. And it was about, I think about 32 years from when I told my mother I wanted to do this. And the only difference was we flew from Stansted instead of Heathrow. And when I got to the plane and we took off and I saw loads of students on that flight, it was very emotional for me because it was a dream to have started this. When I was 13 years old, I said, I want to do this. Unfortunately, we cancelled it, but we are going to start it again very soon now. Now, Airbus have built a plane that can make money with two engines as opposed to four engines. We will restart London KL within the next eight months. And we'll price it at about £250 without food. That'll cost you £322. It won't. But dreams do come true. If there's one thing you can take away from this, and I know it's a little bit of a digression from the speech, is that don't let anyone tell you you can't do anything. And I'll finally finish on my final dream in that my best friend from boarding school called me up and said, hey, I found your tuck box in my garage. Do you want it? I went, yeah, send it over. And the tuck box is ridiculous. Your whole life is in this box for 5 years of your life. And he brought it to my house in London and I saw it and it was amazing. There were three stickers on my tuck box. And before I tell you what the stickers was, I opened it and there was one. Maggie me, Assam Laksa, 30 years on, and music cassettes and all original. I never bought any pirated and I'm sure no one in LSE buys any pirated product because you're all upstanding citizens. But on top of that, the tuck box was three stickers. One was a Qantas airline sticker because I always wanted to start an airline. The second was a Williams Formula one team because I loved racing and I want to build cars and now I own Caterham and we're building cars. And the right was West Ham United, which is a football club I used to support because I loved football. Football was very much part of my life and I loved West Ham and I lived when I was a student in London on the Uxbridge Road, right next to Queen's Park Rangers, and I used to go and watch them on the plastic pitch and before the plastic pitch and after the plastic pitch. So QPR was kind of my second team, but I tried to buy West Ham many times and I failed. And I ended up up with, I think something more special at Greens Park Rangers. And I looked at that boss and I thought, wow. At 12 years old, I had all these dreams of owning a football club. And you must remember you've grown up in the satellite age. I used to listen to football on BBC World Service at 12 o' clock at night. Shortwave radio. You guys never heard of shortwave radio? And we used to have to hold the radio upside down by the cooker, et cetera, to get the best signal. And here I was, I owned a football club, Formula One and an airline. And our very last game of our first season, I was with Kamarudin in a bus going to Man City. We lost. We get relegated depending on the other results. Man City had to win to win the championship. And we were in the bus with the players and everyone's most Man City fans were shouting abuse at us and Cumberland said to me, isn't it amazing? We used to be the guys outside the bus and now we're inside the bus. But what was more amazing, we were sitting there and our little football club was determining who was going to be the champion of the Premier League. And it was fantastic result. We were 21 up with 30 seconds to go, 1 minute to go. And Man City won 3 2. And Manchester United didn't become champions. And I was able to help that process. And so, ladies and gentlemen, ASEAN is very relevant because I, from asean, determined that you champion two years ago. And it was Man City. And finally live your dreams. You can do anything you want to. Don't let anyone tell you you can't do anything. AirAsia is living proof that you can do anything. I came from the music business, I knew nothing about airlines, but with great people surrounding me, a dream. Hard work. You can't get around hard work. There is no substitute to hard work and a bit of luck. We created something special and I hope many of you go on to do that and come home to Southeast Asia and help us build a new Southeast Asia. Thank you for listening.
- [56:23]
A
Thank you, Tony. That was. That was wonderful. Living one's dream, being able to build something quite exceptional under difficult circumstances. An inspiration to the young ones who are here in terms of what you are able to do. Probably an inspiration to some of us around lse little bit longer as well in terms of what we should aspire to, in terms of what we can be doing wearing our cap with pride. Now we've had, and I promised Tony before we started, I shouldn't talk about football, but I must say that my enormous respect and admiration for Tony comes true in the fact that I actually did have a ticket for Emirates tonight, which I gave up on in order to be here.
- [57:11]
B
You didn't give up much, by the.
- [57:12]
A
Way, Chairman of qto. Now, we've had a wonderful conference earlier on today organized by the exceptional LSE IDS Southeast Asia International Affairs Program headed by Kirsten Schultz, who is here. Danny KWA Mundir Majid isn't just good at running airlines, but also very, very good at contributing to the program that we're running at LSE ideas. And much of what you said, Tony, today sort of plays into the framework of that program of what we were discussing earlier on. So I wanted to take off from that and ask you about what you see as the challenges within asean. I mean, we can talk a lot about the dynamism that is there within the region. We can talk about the very large and massively talented population that is within asean. But what do you see as the main challenges for the future? Challenges in terms of things that have to be overcome. And I'm thinking now in very broad terms. I'm thinking in business and economic terms, but I'm also thinking in political terms and in terms of cohesion. That's that key cohesion that a lot of people have been asking themselves again and again, does it actually exist within ASEAN or is this just, you know, I know the geographical expression. Where do you see those challenges and how can they be overcome?
- [58:35]
B
I think it's one word really trust and government. And people have to believe that there's more to gain by working together than remaining sovereign countries. I think there is a big push. It is definitely happening and we're an example of it. We've started an ASEAN airline, CIMB is working towards an ASEAN bank and so on and so forth. But there's an enormous amount of trust issues. Am I losing something? Am I giving up something by allowing a Malaysian company to come in here or a Singaporean company, etc. And I don't think that can be easily solved because. And the second thing is there's vested interests. So if I am a monopolist in one market, why should I open up? You know, But I think the consumer has to speak up and I think AirAsia, because we've got the people behind us. I mean, we were very effective in mobilizing product and people and opening up and governments had to open up because people wanted AirAsia to come. So the trust issue and perseverance, we give up too easily in Southeast Asia because we've had a charmed life in many ways. Things have been easy, growth has happened and you know, people give up and people expect it to be on a platter. Europe didn't come overnight. A couple of world wars in between and you know, the United States of America was not one homogenous country. I dare say it's not all the time either. So, you know, we must persevere if we think the ideals are right. And ultimately we have to make that change. The people of ASEAN has to make the change. We can't wait. And you know, you have countries that where the people voices have been heard and things have changed. So trust from, trust from each other, vested interests who don't want the markets to open up and perseverance I think are the three big challenges. But I'm very optimistic.
- [61:00]
A
Do you think there is, within the ASEAN area today a developing concept idea of there being a people of ASEAN that has a cohesive concept?
- [61:14]
B
Not yet. I don't think so. I mean, we had to create it within AirAsia. I said you don't think of yourself as a Thai or a Malaysian or a Singaporean or whatever. You think of yourself as an Air Asian first and a NASI and Air Asian. No, I think if anyone is from Southeast Asia here, I don't think quite a number of people, ASEAN has any particular relevance in their life and I think that's something that companies have to change and I think governments have to change that. There isn't a minister for ASEAN affairs in any ASEAN country. It's all under Foreign affairs, so lots to do.
- [61:57]
A
And on that, of course, turning over to not just the many people who are here from ASEAN countries, but from others as well to come up with comments and questions for Tony, who would like to give this. A young lady over there, please.
- [62:13]
D
Well, first, as an American, I dream of the day that the inquisition I deal with at the border will end with me taking a photo that would be amazing. But it unfortunately doesn't. I was wondering because I know with the last administration of Dr. Mahathir, you had a big relationship in opening up those airlines. Is there dialogue within the business community now? And is ASEAN receptive? So how do they balance? Sort of, I guess if there is a coalition on the program, private side, with the interests of companies that have that national backing and clearly oppose liberalization.
- [62:53]
B
Okay, could I take another question? Yeah, yeah. Sure.
- [62:56]
A
Okay, I'll take another question.
- [62:57]
B
Don't take too many because they're very smart questions.
- [63:00]
A
This is a very smart question.
- [63:01]
B
I need to think really hard.
- [63:02]
A
No, you have your chance to think, Tony.
- [63:04]
B
It's not my normal thought process.
- [63:06]
A
To Munir. I knew that Munir was going to ask a question. Yeah, there's a mic. What? Please.
- [63:13]
C
Yes, Tony, I am the former Malaysia Airlines chairman that Tony keeps referring to.
- [63:26]
B
Can I tell you one quick story? One quick story. We were in Kodakinabalu in his address.
- [63:31]
C
That lasted 55 minutes and 44 seconds. In 88 seconds, I'd like to ask you two things. One, what do you think you would have looked like if you had lost a bet against Branson? You know, when, if you had to dress like this, you know, delectable, you know, Air Asia hostesses that you have. Okay, but secondly, more seriously though, in terms of ASEAN and competition in the aviation industry, how do you see the Indonesian position, the protection of their market and not granting sixth and seventh freedoms? And how do you see the ASEAN Open Air Agreement taking root even as Lion Air is now sort of throwing the gauntlet at Asia in competitive terms? Thank you.
- [64:37]
B
Okay.
- [64:37]
A
I knew there had to be an airlines question from Munir. Okay. Would you hand Dusty?
- [64:42]
B
Yeah, I'll do the first question first. I think I'm going to answer it correctly, but if I don't. This was very intellectually said point, but we are within the private industry forming pressure groups to influence change. So we created something called the ASEAN Business Club of which actually just did a paper on liberalization of air traffic. So many of the top companies in Southeast Asia have got together and said we need to also push for change. So there is a balance between waiting for the governments to do it and actually forming groups within to try and influence change. And also ironically, we try and use that group to go and talk to people who are opposed to liberalization. Because the strongest pressure groups of one market are actually companies themselves who go and lobby their politicians and say, well, don't open up the market or don't open up, open up the Indonesian air market, et cetera. So it's a two pronged approach. One is to meet the leaders and to talk about the benefits of liberalization. And also when they pretend to liberalize, sometimes they also put in lots of blocks. So they say, okay, the banking industry is open, but actually it's not. There are many ways of stopping it from growing. So, so we keep reminding governments, well, we've got to remove this, this, this Et cetera, to truly be open and we try and influence the companies that are trying to stop the liberalization right now with limited success to talk about it. So yes, we have formed these groups and one of them is the ASEAN Business Club. I think dialogue is the best way and I think engagement is the best way. And I think that's one thing ASEAN has done. When everyone isolated Myanmar, ASEAN still engaged Myanmar. And I think ASEAN drove the change that was required. So I hope I've answered your question that you know, it's a mixture of regulation, but also us in the private industry sector making some change as well. I would have looked a lot worse than Richard Branson if I'd lost a bet, but I knew I wouldn't lose. So it was good. But going back to it, that was unbelievable. The amount of publicity that got was unbelievable. You couldn't have bought that amount of coverage from that bet. And I think liberalization is happening in the aviation industry and I think if I turn it around, it's really good that Lion Air from Indonesia is now in Malaysia. That shows that, you know, it's not a one way an Indonesian airline can come to Malaysia. They're also opening in Thailand and that's going to spur more liberalization. If it was just AirAsia opening everywhere else up ain't going to work. But if a few, few other Asean airlines begin to open up and if Tiger Airways, I've always said Tiger Singapore should use Sinai as their low cost airport, I've got no objections. If Tiger Air wants to operate from Sinai and again it's much Singapore, we'll talk about open sky, but they have very limited sky. It's a very small country, but hey, that's the reality of the world. I'd rather be open and you can't pick and choose where you want to be open and let them operate in Malaysia and we operate in Singapore and vice versa. So long way to go. Long way to go. But I think things like Lion Air and us going in and the best man will win. We've got to be better than lion if we want to remain as the leader in low cost travel. And the consumer will decide and that's what the free market's all about. So I think it's starting, it's happening. Yes, there will be countries. Indonesia is a little bit reluctant, but having said that, we were given a license to operate in Indonesia, so takes time, but I think it will happen, the consequence of it and we're the beneficiaries. I think that's what you were saying we're the beneficiaries of opening up, but it also means competition is going to open up. But overall we say open it up and let the best man win and let the consumer decide who's better.
- [69:30]
A
Other questions? There's one right at the back up there. Yeah. Sorry to have to make you run with the mic. Thank you.
- [69:42]
B
Yes, sir, I'm Daniel, LSE alumnus.
- [69:47]
C
My question is about.
- [69:49]
B
You've spoken about freedom and so forth, about disability rights, both for the 600 million people and also visitors, those who are disabled. If I buy a cheap ticket, why do you not subsume the cost and charge about 20 pounds extra for assistance in the airport? Thank you. Well, actually, could I take another? Ah, yeah, sure you can.
- [70:20]
A
Sorry.
- [70:21]
B
You're the boss.
- [70:21]
A
Anyone involved here? Jurgen.
- [70:29]
C
You mentioned you wanted to be close to the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta. And of course the Secretariat is supposed to facilitate cooperation between the ASEAN member states. I was wondering to what extent, in what ways has the ASEAN Secretary been helpful to you and how would you like to see the Secretary evolve in the future?
- [70:51]
A
Tony?
- [70:52]
B
Okay. On the handicap, you know, I had a. We were naive when we first started, we didn't have actually any handicapped facilities and there was a demonstration outside AirAsia's office and I then went to them and said, look, I'm wrong, I'll come and visit you and we'll. Please tell us what we've done wrong. I remember going to the room and I was surrounded by many wheelchairs and I thought they were going to destroy me because I'd come out in a wheelchair. And they were fantastic. And we said we were wrong. We don't charge anything extra. We provide all the facilities for free, whether it's lifts, etc. And many of them have helped us in training of our staff in terms of how to handle physical challenged people. So we don't pass on the cost at all in terms of our airline. But we made mistakes at the beginning which we corrected. Asean, I'd like them to be more commercial and I think they're much. ASEAN is really a political organization and now it has to morph into more commercial. It has to understand the Secretariat, the ASEAN finance ministers all get together and then they do some things. But there has to be an economic part within asean. It's still really more of an admin office for meetings, et cetera, and facilitating conferences, etc. So there needs to be an economic think tank which is working with industry, which then can cast the message. It's beginning to happen. On aviation, I think we've made tremendous progress, but we've engaged them and they've invested in that, in that part. So the challenge now is for ASEAN to move itself from a political secretariat to a more economic. We're beginning to see the fruits of it, but it came from our massive investment in time by being in Jakarta and to begin to understand the benefits of an open market, the benefits of a, a Single Aviation Authority, etc. Now there was never a platform for industry to discuss. So if the banking industry can go to ASEAN and say, well, here's the benefits of a single banking authority, then they can go to the finance ministers and make that from a neutral perspective, they can get all the information from us. So I'd like them to be a think tank and I'd like them to be a filter of information which they can then present to the leaders of the country of the benefits. Some may not be, some may be vested, etc. But ASEAN needs to be more proactive in making policy. Policy is still made at the individual countries, I think when the heads of state get together or the finance ministers get together, etc. As opposed to ASEAN driving change. I think it would be quicker, more effective and more efficient.
- [74:04]
A
Other questions? There's one up there at the back. Yes, the first one, please.
- [74:10]
B
Sir, thank you very much for the presentation. Dr. Fernandez, I was just wondering if you could say anything about how the Trans Pacific Partnership might make the ASEAN irrelevant and if this can maybe open up opportunities for yourself, that is Trans Pacific low cost airlines. Thank you.
- [74:26]
A
And the gentleman right in front of you, please. Thanks.
- [74:32]
E
Just following on from what you just said, one of the things that I've, we've seen, I work at Asia House and we're in contact with a lot of the ASEAN governments, the foreign ministries where they have the, as you say, they don't have a, they don't have an ASEAN Minister, they have a Director General for asean and it's usually the Deputy Director General that does all the thinking and that feeds through to the secretariat, but it's not a cohesive system in that way. But also the trade ministers, and it's clear from a lot of the conversations that you have with these guys, you're talking about trade barriers, tariff barriers, how they want to encourage investment into their countries. The whole ASEAN question is a complete secondary thought, it's an afterthought. But as you were saying, you're hoping that the secretariat becomes more of an economic think tank where we can get some good facts and figures that really demonstrate the value that the sense that I'm saying or we're seeing is that there isn't enough arguments for the positive arguments for integration that can be sort of grounded in reality. And there seems to be a lot more sort of rhetoric around the importance of sort of taking our time and getting it right and all that sort of stuff. How do you think we can push that through in that direction really to get it right?
- [75:50]
A
Thanks, Tony.
- [75:54]
B
The Trans Pacific, I really don't know enough about it. I know it's been a very emotional topic, but again, I generally think that if ASEAN wants to compete with the rest of the world, then it has to be strong anyway and it's going to come. Globalization is here, but I don't think it makes ASEAN irrelevant. And it links into the second question. Actually if you look at the quantitative easing and all the ASEAN currencies kind of collapsed. There's so much foreign capital in the ASEAN markets and there's very little ASEAN capital within the ASEAN markets, if you know what I mean. I mean how much of Malaysian sovereign funds is invested in the Thai stock market or the Indonesian stock market? And so here, you know, one statement by Ben Bernanke and the Indonesian rupiah went 15% down. The ringgit collapsed, all kinds of things because all that capital was US and European fund management capital and they're obsessed with trade, et cetera, et cetera. But lots of the systemic financial underpinning could be so much better if ASEAN started to develop a single capital market and more capital that stayed within the country. When we buy planes, the capital, the debt capital is coming from Europe or America generally backed by ECA financing. There isn't, but there's tons of liquidity in Southeast Asia. So there's so many of these things that need to be developed in there and that's where you've got to impress on if we helped each other more as opposed to all trying to compete and worry about protection, etc. Actually the people of ASEAN would benefit tremendously more and would be in a much stronger position, you know, wouldn't care about TPP and all because we see that as a great opportunity to market. Basically I think the more opening up is better as opposed to the mass hysteria that TPP causes. Will we start a Trans Pacific low cost airline? Maybe, who knows. My dream is that I'll retire from AirAsia when we fly to Rio and I can kick a football at Copacabana. Not sure when that will happen, but you know, I'm all for making the world a smaller place and Bringing things together. So I give you one example of hundreds of examples and I'm sure you share many of the frustrations where you see, if ASEAN work together, there'd be a much bigger economic pie for the people of asean. It will get there, I am sure. But one has to bring these examples out because sometimes they're staring you in the face and no one sees it.
- [78:52]
A
We're coming up to 8 o', clock, so I'm afraid we have to draw proceedings to an end. This has been a tremendously inspirational occasion, Tony. Dreams do come true. Miracles do happen. Nicholas Bentner scored after two minutes at the Emirates. So in more senses than one, this has been a meaningful evening. Tony, you are a great contributor to.
- [79:17]
B
What shows you how interested he was when I was speaking. He's following the Arsenal match.
- [79:22]
A
It only happened right now. I was taking in absolutely everything up till a quarter to bed. So you are a great friend, great supporter of your old school. We really appreciate the support that you provide to lse, to our students, to many of the things that we want to do here. We want to engage with you and other alumni from the region even more than what we do today. I think the story that you told us today is inspirational, not just in the sense of what can be achieved when you follow your dreams, but also about how persistence pays off. And it's that latter point, I think, which is particularly important with regard to the ASEAN story and the issues that we are discussing in the larger political and economic context. It is that persistence that I think is needed if one is going to achieve real regional integration of the kind that most people, I think, within the region are really wishing for. So, thank you again, Tony. Wonderful presentation.
- [80:20]
B
Thank you.
- [80:21]
A
It was wonderful to see you at LSC again. Thank you very much.