SUNWAY BERHAD FYE 31 DEC 2021 REVENUE WAS RM3.7 BILLION & PRE-TAX PROFIT RM463.9 MILLION

Perak boy of Hakka origin from the mining town of Pusing near Batu Gajah, Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah was acquainted with the struggles of mining workers under British owned tin mining companies. Once all the tin has been exhausted, what is left behind is wasteland and out of job mining workers. Jeffrey Cheah fared better than his friends who lacked education because of family poverty.
He remembers well those hard years of childhood that are indelibly inked in his mind.

After his graduation from Victoria University, Melbourne, he returned and worked as an accountant for a while. But inside him, he knew that he had much bigger dreams.

The business opportunity came when a British tin mining corporation wanted to sell a large disused mining site which is the land on which Sunway City sits today. It was the 1970s. He had this big idea of repurposing the ecological eyesore into a sustainable city. When he first took bankers to the site of the abandoned craters, they balked at his idea of constructing a city out of it.
Frankly, he admitted, he wasn't so sure he could really pull it off. But he did in more ways than one.

Sunway Berhad group is one of S.E. Asia's leading conglomerates with a well developed 800 acre township of Sunway City KL, Sunway Damansara, Sunway City, Perak, Sunway City Iskandar Puteri, Johore,  and Sunway Penang.The healthcare division was launched in 1999 with the flagship Sunway Medical Centre and today its tertiary hospital network is making Sunway a leading private healthcare group in Malaysia.

Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah remains humble about his achievements. Two economic crises - the mid-1980s and the Asian Financial crisis (1997-98) almost bankrupted him.Heavy borrowings during the good times and black swans that appeared unexpectedly taught him lessons he never forgot. Business is not sunshine all the time.

Education is close to his heart and his ambition, he said, is to make Sunway University a Harvard of the East. To this end, he has placed his educational institutions under a charity - The Jeffrey Cheah Foundation.

Read more in our epublication in this website.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

1. Sunway Berhad. https://www.sunway.com.my/board-of-directors/
2. Sunway Berhad. 2021 Annual Report. https://disclosure.bursamalaysia.com/FileAccess/apbursaweb/download?id=216381&name=EA_DS_ATTACHMENTS
3. Forbes Asia. January 2017. Sunway Stories. 31 January 2017.Jeffrey Cheah - A Man of Two Worlds. https://www.sunway.com.my/stories/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Forbes_Asia_Jan2017_Sunway_HiRes_23Dec_e.pdf. https://www.sunway.com.my/stories/jeffrey-cheah-a-man-of-two-worlds/
4. The Sun Daily. 1 September 2022. https://www.thesundaily.my/local/our-education-system-needs-overhaul-XD9764752
5. Sunway Group. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWHsQlVGOfA
6. The Jeffrey Cheah Foundation. 8 April 2014. The Jeffrey Cheah Foundation. https://www.theworldfolio.com/news/tan-sri-jeffrey-chea/2837/
7. The Malaysian Reserve. 24 June 2021. https://themalaysianreserve.com/2021/06/24/gic-acquires-16-stake-in-sunway-healthcare/
8. Edgeprop.my. 26 April 2019. Tan Ai Leng. https://www.edgeprop.my/content/1516853/jeffrey-cheah-%E2%80%9Cstart-picking-rubbish%E2%80%A6%E2%80%9D
9. New Straits Times. 19 September 2019. From Small Town Boy to Billionaire. https://www.pressreader.com/malaysia/new-straits-times/20190919/281913069822019
10. The Star. 2 November 2007. Jeffrey Cheah - the Rural Kid made Good. https://www.thestar.com.my/news/community/2007/11/02/jeffrey-cheah-the-rural-kid-made-good/
11. The Edge Markets. 20 January 2021. Rash Behari Bhattacharjee. Building towards a Harvard of the East.  https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/building-towards-harvard-east