The operator at ShareInvestor

As an emergency room doctor in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Michael Leong learned to act fast and, if necessary, practice triage.

As an emergency room doctor in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Michael Leong learned to act fast and, if necessary, practice triage. That experience has served him well in his second career as an entrepreneur. Explains the 42-year-old Singaporean: “I operate my businesses like a casualty ward. I do triage all the time. I look at all my operations every day and zoom into areas that need my urgent attention. Medicine laid the foundation of how I run my company.”

Leong’s first venture after giving up the practice of medicine and returning to Singapore in 1998 was to start a health care supplies provider. The company soon was in need of life support, and Leong had to scramble to raise cash. Having dabbled in stocks, he decided to set up Asia’s first financial portal: ShareInvestor.com.

The health care business succumbed, but ShareInvestor flourished. A forum where small investors could exchange stock picks, it was popular with day traders and a magnet for funding. By 2001, ShareInvestor was worth an estimated $80 million Singapore dollars ($46.2 million) But then tech stocks collapsed, decimating day traders -- and ShareInvestor. The company’s value plunged to S$4.4 million. Again Leong’s remedy was to diversify. He started ListedCompany.com for managing investor relations and SIStation.com for providing real-time stock quotes.

Today Leong’s umbrella company, ShareInvestor.com Holdings, is well balanced: It derives 55 percent of its revenues from ListedCompany, 20 percent from SIStation and just 25 percent from the original ShareInvestor. In coming months Leong hopes to expand to Hong Kong, mainland China and Malaysia. And he plans to list ShareInvestor.com Holdings on the Singapore exchange.

Perhaps then Leong will have more time for his third career: author and publisher. His first book, Be an Entrepreneur, published in 2002, “shares the true feeling of what you go through when you build a business,” he says.

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