Heinecke, whose wife of 46 years, Kathy, also took Thai citizenship, cites his acceptance by Thais as a good omen. The bearded, 1.8-meter-tall (6-foot-tall) Heinecke, who towers over most Thais, could have been spurned as an outsider.

He speaks barely 100 words of their language, according to investor Thadani. By his own admission, his shouting and occasional displays of anger are un-Thai-like.

“I wear my feelings on my sleeve,” Heinecke says. “But I won’t carry a grudge, and I think this is somewhat a Thai tradition, too. That’s why I am optimistic for a rapid recovery, because grudges are forgotten very quickly. Today’s enemies are tomorrow’s friends.”

‘Trusting Relationship’

Perhaps no foreign-born investor has made a bigger personal bet on Thailand than Heinecke. As a U.S. diplomat’s son studying at the International School Bangkok in 1967, he resisted parental pressure to return home to enroll at Washington’s Georgetown University.

Instead, at age 17, he borrowed $1,200 and set up an office-cleaning company. By the time he became a Thai citizen, Heinecke had forged business ties with the royal family’s asset managers by leasing crown land on which he built hotels.

“Bill struck me as a go-getter but also as an honest person,” says Usni Prnamoj, who heads the office that manages the king’s private property and who signed the first such deal in 1976.

“It was the start of a long and trusting relationship,” Heinecke wrote in The Entrepreneur (Wiley, 2003).

‘Sacred Asset’

Just how trusting became clear in 1999, when another of the monarchy’s money managers, the Crown Property Bureau, helped Heinecke thwart Goldman Sachs’s $46 million hostile takeover of Rajadamri Hotel Pcl, owner of the Bangkok property then known as the Regent and since renamed the Four Seasons.

The hotel stands on land owned by the royal family, and Heinecke, who controlled 25 percent of Rajadamri’s shares, rallied the property bureau and other stockholders to his side. Goldman finally ended up with only a 41 percent stake and, in 2003, sold out to Heinecke for $19 million.

“Goldman’s offer was higher than Bill’s, but Bill’s PR machine was better,” Thadani says. “He persuaded other shareholders the hotel was a sacred Thai asset that mustn’t fall into foreign hands.” Edward Naylor, Goldman’s Hong Kong–based spokesman, declined to comment.

For Heinecke, that victory marked a sharp rebound from events of less than two years earlier when the collapse of the baht had unleashed the 1997-to-1998 Asian financial crisis.

‘Worth Nothing’

As the baht plunged to 55 to the U.S. dollar from 25 six months earlier, hundreds of companies that had borrowed in dollars collapsed. Heinecke says Minor was almost one of them.

“I was worth $100 million in 1996,” he wrote in his book. “Soon after the crash, I was worth nothing.”

He says he survived by acting faster than others. The auto-racing fanatic sold all his overseas assets, right down to a Corvette and a Jaguar E-Type, repatriating the funds to Thailand to prop up his business. By the end of 1998, he was back in the black.

Soon, Heinecke was once again fighting a global giant when he took on what was then the world’s second-biggest fast-food-chain operator: Louisville, Kentucky–based Tricon Global Restaurants Inc.

In 1981, Heinecke had won the rights to Tricon’s Pizza Hut franchise in Thailand. When it came up for renewal in 1999, Tricon -- since renamed Yum! Brands Inc. (YUM:US) -- sought an increase in royalties and a clause banning Heinecke from operating other franchises.

Heinecke resisted and set up his own brand, The Pizza Company, in competition. Today, it has some 190 stores in Thailand compared with 79 for Pizza Hut.

‘Aggressively Expanding’

Without commenting on the set-to with Heinecke, Scott Bergren, Pizza Hut’s Plano, Texas–based chief executive officer, said in an e-mail, “We are aggressively expanding the Pizza Hut brand in Thailand.”

Heinecke has succeeded in large part because of the loyalty he engenders in Thai staff, says Chompan Kulnides, a former A.T. Kearney Inc. and Accenture Plc management consultant who’s now investment director of Heinecke’s family office.

“Other foreign bosses I worked for all said they loved Thailand, and some had even married Thais, but they always treated their Thai employees differently,” Chompan, 38, says. “They referred to us as ‘the Thais.’ He refers to all of us as ‘the team.’ There’s never the slightest segregation. That’s why I want to work for him forever.”

Elephant Polo

Chompan says that for all his perceived toughness, Heinecke has further endeared himself to Thais by spending money where he earns it -- supporting causes ranging from children in Bangkok’s Klong Toey slum to elephants that fell on hard times after they and their mahouts were left jobless when logging was banned in Thailand’s forests.

Each year, Heinecke stages a charity elephant polo tournament that has become a hit on the social calendar. He also runs an elephant sanctuary adjacent to his Four Seasons and Anantara resorts in Thailand’s Golden Triangle.

What’s important to investors is Heinecke’s ability to do business successfully in Thailand in a manner acceptable to foreign shareholders, says Joel Silverstein, president of Hong Kong–based East West Hospitality Group, a consulting firm. “It is very rare indeed to find a Western entrepreneur in an emerging market succeed to such an extent while still adhering for the most part to Western business practices,” Silverstein says.

Reflecting on past battles, Heinecke says his tussles with Goldman and Tricon were unavoidable. “Sometimes, you are backed into a corner and have to fight your way out,” he says. Today, amid Thailand’s turmoil, Heinecke says he’s again going to stand his ground. “It’s my home,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Source:

To contact the reporter on this story: William Mellor in Sydney at [email protected]

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stryker McGuire at [email protected] Jonathan Neumann