Building Tomorrow Land

Hong Kong Telecom boss Alex Arena has his eyes fixed firmly on the future. Getting the government to play ball in a timely fashion might be the tricky bit.

- Anna Healy Fenton

For a man not given to talking about the colour in his own life, Hong Kong Telecom Executive Director and Group Managing Director certainly comes with a bright sartorial sense. The 66-year old Australian boss of Hong Kong Telecom (HKT) comes to our interview sporting a snappy suit teamed with a rather striking pair of bright blue brogues. This sort of statement was somehow unexpected of an electrical engineer whose resume reads like a headhunter’s wish list of Asia’s top 20 telecoms jobs.

Arena’s no-nonsense handshake and piercing gaze from suggested that frivolous questions about fancy footwear could wait, for now.

It was Hong Kong’s former Chief Secretary Anson Chan who set the New South Wales native on course 25 years ago to becoming Group Managing Director of HKT (HKT) and HKT Management, trustee-manager of the HKT Trust. He is also a member of HKT's Executive Committee and holds numerous directorships within the HKT Group. Add up the titles, and it means Arena is firmly in charge of the HKT empire.

Chan, then head of the Economic Services Branch, enticed Arena away from the Australian Telecommunications Authority in the early 1990s and gave him his first mission: liberalise Hong Kong's telecommunications sector to make it more competitive, and rebuild the regulatory body. Arena would go on to become the director-general of telecommunications at the Office of Telecommunications Authority.

“She (Chan) wanted to open up the Hong Kong economy and introduce competition, as Cable and Wireless had a monopoly.” Arena remains a committed Chan fan. “She’s always had this inner strength – she’s a dynamo,” he says admiringly. “I believed in what she wanted to do and we did it.”