Human love more valuable than assets: businessman Le Van Kiem

Successful entrepreneurs are generally admired for their assets. For war veteran Le Van Kiem, chairman of Long Thanh Golf Investment and Trading JSC, what he calls “human love” is more valuable than assets.

‘Exercises’ for the heart

During their marriage of more than 50 years, Kiem and his wife Tran Cam Nhung have stood side by side to overcome many challenges and failures and enjoy the fruit of their success.

The couple experienced hardship in Vietnam during the war and later. Before 1975, they studied in the north at schools for southern students, living among wholehearted communities. This has built up in them a spirit to serve the community.

“My first physical exercise for my heart was opening up my hands to help the community,” he says.

Starting in the early 1990s, Kiem and his wife built houses to donate to the needy, set up and run charity funds of up to tens of billions of Vietnamese dong (VND10 billion = $424,000) for communities and disadvantaged students.

The couple have always participated in charity projects launched by the Vietnamese government and non-governmental organizations. Among them are the Fund for Children of Vietnam Veterans, Tran Cam Nhung - Wings of Dreams Scholarship Fund, a national milk donation program, and Bill Gates' Vietnam Health Fund, which benefits the poor in Vietnam.

The Kiem-Nhung couple also supports families with merits to the country’s revolutionary process.

Notably, the Les are also known as one of the seven members of the Founding Council of Fulbright University Vietnam (FUV), who were committed together to donating $35 million to the first phase of the construction FUV’s main campus in Ho Chi Minh City’s Saigon High-Tech Park.

Kiem also considers doing charity work in neighboring Laos and Cambodia as national gratitude. He has joined hands with Him Lam Group chairman Duong Cong Minh in raising funds to build a $700,000 school in Kampong Cham, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s hometown.

Kiem says his family have to date spent more than VND2,700 billion (over $1124.5million) on charity works.

“Call me a veteran”

Kiem wears many other hats as chairman of the Vietnam Veteran Entrepreneurs Association, KN Group chairman, and some others. But he prefers to be called “a veteran”.

He was born in 1945 in central Vietnam. When he was one year old, his family took him to a revolutionary region in Quang Tri. His father died when he was four. He grew up in the love of his mother and the care and protection of his parents' friends. In 1954, he was brought to the north along with many other students and was admitted to the University of Irrigation in 1964.

Kiem registered to become a soldier in 1971 to return to battlefields in the south. “I always think that serving the country is part of my life.” His wish-to-join-the army letter, written with his blood, was finally accepted after several refusals.

Vietnam was re-unified in 1975 but the whole country suffered from post-war hardship. By the end of the 1970s, he sold his only Honda motorcycle to build an animal feed mixing machine.

Kiem says: “My wife and I were working in the public sector at day time but made animal feed in the night. Our ingredients included rice bran, oyster powder, peanut shells, coconut oil, and corn. We mixed them and successfully sold the product.”

Therefore, his family’s Huy Hoang-branded animal feed was rapidly seen in many southern marketplaces.

Later, he expanded to making paints from oil extracted from rubber seeds, while the waste was used to make fertilizer. He also continued to make coloring powders used in the construction sector.

One of the infrastructure works that his own Huy Hoang Company donated to HCMC is the Hang Xanh Intersection, inaugurated on April 30, 1995. The build-transfer (BT) project cost only one third of international prices but was subject to international quality standards, according to city authorities. He used the profit from this project to build a monument in HCMC’s Cu Chi district in memory of national heroes and war martyrs and donated it to the city administration.

In the early 1990s, Kiem and his company started to invest in the HCMC real estate industry, buying prime locations in the center of District 2, now Thu Duc city on HCMC’s outskirts. Later, the property market was gradually frozen due to the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, putting his family in a tough spot.

“During that difficult time, some of my employees came to see me with their house ownership certificates for me to use as mortgage to get bank loans to pay my debts. Though I did not accept that, their hearts stay with me forever,” he recalls.

His family businesses have experienced lots of ups and downs during the past three decades, but he and his wife have managed to overcome them with their enterprising spirit.

To date, his own multi-business ecosystem includes real estate development, resorts, golf courses, and clean energy. Kiem says his total investments have exceeded $5 billion.

Power has also been transferred to the next generation. His daughter Le Nu Thuy Duong became a deputy CEO in 2003, then became CEO of Long Thanh Golf Investment and Trading in 2015. Le Huy Hoang, his eldest son, is currently managing the company’s investment projects in Laos.

For his long-term development strategy, Kiem says his group wants to build new-generation industrial parks in Vietnam to capitalize on the global green production trend, and to develop “smart city” projects, including renewable energy sources, to provide a modern and convenient living environment.

“Personally, I’ll continue to use parts of my company’s profits for charitable activities to support diverse communities,” says Kiem.