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When Harry Lee took over TAL, a Hong Kong apparel company that manufactures shirts and trousers for dozens of big global brands in 1980, one of the first challenges he tackled was bribery.
“There was still a lot of hanky-panky going on . . . I was given three written pages of how many per cent we’d pay to this customer and how many per cent we’d pay to that customer,” says Mr Lee, sitting in his spartan office in Kowloon, across the harbour from Hong Kong island.
Back then, the company was known as much for its nocturnal activities in Tsim Sha Tsui – a Kowloon district where hawkers still offer tailored clothes – as for shirts. Its monthly entertainment bill was HK$200,000. “If you went to the best Chinese restaurant, a very good table with shark fin . . . was less than HK$1,000,” says Mr Lee. “Where did all the rest of the money go, what do you think? Women. We were very well-known in all the nightclubs in Hong Kong.”
Mr Lee, now 71, changed the culture, slashed the monthly expenses to HK$15,000 and spent three decades expanding TAL into a US$800m revenue company with