Chearavanont

By Robert Horn

Dhanin Chearavanont isn't ashamed to say he wants to retire. Still putting in 14-hour workdays at age 65, the chairman and CEO of Charoen Pokphand Group (CP)--Thailand's one truly multinational corporation--says he has found time to meditate on the possibilities of voluntary idleness (he's worth about $1.3 billion, according to Forbes). Maybe he would unmoor his yacht and sail off into the South China Sea. Or maybe he'd head to his farm and tend to his prized fighting cocks. Maybe. It's just that things keep cropping up at work, he explains.

Things like the aftermath of Asia's 1997 economic meltdown. Dhanin says just before the Thai baht collapsed, he almost retired. But times were so tough that Dhanin, who had spent decades building a firm that now employs 100,000 people in 20 countries, found himself confronted by a bevy of bankers. HSBC was calling in about $400 million in loans made to CP, and the company didn't have the cash. Dhanin was forced to unload assets to raise money, including stakes in a Chinese motorcycle manufacturer and a brewer--companies he believed would thrive as the mainland market developed. "I was prepared to use any means to ensure our survival,'' says Dhanin. "It felt bad, but I always believed we'd get it back tomorrow."

They did. Five years later, Dhanin has reduced CP's debt and re-established its foothold in China. CP has set up a new brewery and a motorcycle factory and has announced plans to open 100 hypermarkets on the mainland by 2006. "If we don't go in now, we will be sidelined,'' says Dhanin. Chinese competitors, in particular, "are springing up like mushrooms after a rain.''

However, just as Dhanin is building anew, he has been confronted with another potentially damaging setback: avian flu, which has devastated the Thai poultry industry over the past several months. As the No. 1 chicken producer in Asia, CP has been swept up in the crisis. Initially, rumors swirled that CP had contributed to the disease's spread in Thailand by trying to hide the outbreak. CP's participation in any cover-up "is just not true,'' says Dhanin. The company's chicken farms are a bulwark against the spread of diseases, he contends, because its birds are kept in giant warehouses, sequestered from birds believed to be carriers of the virus. His views are supported by a Bangkok-based senior officer of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, who says enclosed factory farms like CP's are the safest.

Moreover, Dhanin says CP began warning Thai farmers about the possibility of avian flu in November. That's when company officials showed him a newspaper photo of birds dying in central Thailand. Dhanin says he had no idea it was the deadly H5N1 virus, but he knew he had to act. Orders went out to seal up all of CP's chicken plants by further restricting access to plant premises--even delivery trucks were kept out. On Jan. 23, government officials announced that two young boys had tested positive for avian flu. The next day, CP's stock plummeted 12.5%. But share prices have since rebounded. And CP says no birds on the factory farms it operates have got sick. Investors expect CP to weather the damage done to its chicken operations, which account for 10% of the group's revenues.

Though company officials have not said how much the outbreak will cost CP, Dhanin is once again digging in to fight for his business. After all, he comes from a family that started with next to nothing. Dhanin's father and uncle emigrated from China's Guangdong province in 1921, settled in Bangkok and scraped together enough money to open a seed shop. That sprouted operations in animal feed and fertilizer. When Dhanin, the youngest of four sons, took over the company in 1964, he moved aggressively into poultry farming. A tie-in with Arbor Acres Farm of the U.S. added new technology and the concept of vertical integration--from feed to fowl to distribution, retail and fast-food outlets. And when Deng Xiaoping began the first capitalist reforms in China in 1978, CP was literally first in the door.

If it weren't for the challenge of making it again in China, Dhanin says, he might have retired after the 1997 economic crisis. But he's preparing for the day when age reduces his role. His three sons attended top Western business schools and hold jobs at some of CP's most demanding ventures. "You should place your children at the feet of masters rather than make them bosses right away," Dhanin says. Although the sons work as hard as their father, they're open to other outlooks on life. "My father may not like to hear this," says the youngest, Supachai, 36, the CEO of CP subsidiary TelecomAsia, "but some day, I'd like to retire early." Dream on, kiddo. --By Robert Horn