PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

Busi­ness­man Arthur Lok Jack was yes­ter­day hailed for his courage to make tough de­ci­sions as well as his be­lief in re­gion­al growth.

Trib­utes came from con­sul­tant Dr Shafeek Sul­tan-Khan, for­mer Massy CEO Ger­vase Warn­er, San­dals ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Adam Stew­art as Lok Jack launched his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy at the Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness in Mt Hope on Mon­day.

Sul­tan-Khan de­tailed Lok Jack's rise from a sta­tionery clerk to a stenog­ra­ph­er to the es­tab­lish­ment of As­so­ci­at­ed Brand In­dus­tries Ltd and to his el­e­va­tion to chair­man of the Massy group. The con­sul­tant not­ed that Lok Jack's mot­to "At­ti­tude de­ter­mines al­ti­tude," guid­ed his life and ca­reer.

He ex­plained that Lok Jack's work eth­ic and busi­ness acu­men could summed by his de­f­i­n­i­tion of Chi­nese eco­nom­ics

Sul­tan-Khan said,"His own ver­sion of Chi­nese eco­nom­ics, which is, you wake up ear­ly, work hard all day, you get tired, you fall asleep ear­ly, and when you sleep, you don't spend mon­ey. And when you don't spend mon­ey, you re­tain your earn­ings and that, my friend is Chi­nese eco­nom­ics."

Dr. Sul­tan-Khan al­so de­tailed sev­er­al of Lok Jack's chal­lenges, in­clud­ing his time guid­ing the tran­si­tion of BWIA to Caribbean Air­lines Ltd, which was ex­pand­ed up­on by Warn­er, who was hand-picked by Lok Jack for a task force over­see­ing that de­vel­op­ment.

That un­der­lined, ac­cord­ing to Warn­er, Lok Jack's courage, to un­der­take tough de­ci­sions by first­ly call­ing for no po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the process, shut­ting the air­line en­tire­ly and sell­ing the Heathrow slots pre­vi­ous­ly owned by the BWIA.

"This air­line prob­a­bly needs to shut down and maybe restart be­cause it not mak­ing any sense. So we said, 'No, we can't do that. That's a ter­ri­ble idea. You know, it's a very im­por­tant to coun­try, etc. So we said, Okay, let's try this trans­for­ma­tion. Try the trans­for­ma­tion plan. Arthur writes about it in the book. We said, okay, if you want to do this, (the Union) says, hell no, no way. Not on our watch. Union ob­jects. We say al­right, we closed on the 31st of De­cem­ber, 2006. We opened a brand com­pa­ny the next day, new con­tracts for every­body. I mean, talk about un­pop­u­lar. Oh, my good­ness! This was a move of grand, but I want to use the right word, courage," said Warn­er, who al­so ex­plained Lok Jack's men­tor­ship and guid­ance dur­ing his time at Massy.

Lok Jack who took to podi­um af­ter the trib­utes, not­ed the need for out-of-the-box think­ing and learn­ing as he ex­plained his times skip­ping school helped sharp­en his mind­set through the ad­ven­tures and mis­takes made along the way.

He said, "Suc­cess does not de­mand per­fec­tion. It de­mands per­se­ver­ance, cu­rios­i­ty and a will­ing­ness to learn from every mis­take."

Ear­li­er his son, Nicholas, al­so not­ed that com­pa­nies should not be ashamed to an­nounce they are prof­itable, as he not­ed com­pa­nies can not lend aid if they are not prof­itable.

The event was at­tend­ed by sev­er­al of Lok Jack's peers in the busi­ness sec­tor in­clud­ing ANSA McAL ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Nor­man Sab­ga, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo and sev­er­al lo­cal politi­cians in­clud­ing op­po­si­tion leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les.