When 15-year-old Richard Elman flunked his O-level exams at Hasmonean Grammar School in Hendon, England, in 1955, his teachers laughed at the notion of his taking them again. So Elman quit school and got a job as a laborer at a nearby scrap-metal yard selling tin, zinc and copper.
The poor student got the last laugh, however. Elman went from selling scrap to trading commodities in an extraordinary career that has made the 64-year-old one of the richest O-level washouts in British history.
In 1986, Elman set up his own commodities trading company in Hong Kong -- Noble Group (tipping his hat to author James Clavell) -- and today it is Asia’s biggest supplier of steel, iron and coal. The 850-person firm recently diversified into soft commodities such as rice, corn and cocoa. A new report from London’s L.E.K. Consulting puts Singapore-listed Noble at the top of the class for shareholder returns: 66 percent over the past three years and 51 percent over the past five, making it No. 1 among Singapore’s 54 biggest companies.
Elman’s firm has hugely benefited from China’s development. Noble’s profits surged 556 percent, to $126.3 million, in this year’s first half on soaring commodities, prices. “I don’t see how Beijing can materially slow down the China machine,” Elman says.
