(By Mr. Chin Chee Kee, founder)
Years have flown by. I remember coming to Labuan in 1981. Back
then Labuan was a sleepy town with no form of entertainment
and only one high rise building to speak of. The tallest building
then was Hotel Labuan which is a 10-storey building! There were
constant water shortage and power failure. You had to have dinner
before 7 p.m. otherwise you can not find one after that. I used
to tell my friends that Labuan was a cowboy-town, a town without
any activities after dark. However, since the declaration of
Labuan as an IOFC on 1 October 1990, the government have developed
the infrastructure of Labuan and Labuan has indeed transformed
from cowboy-town into a modern island with high rise buildings
and modern facilities.
When Labuan was declared an IOFC in 1990, Noblehouse
was one of the pioneer trust companies to set up in Labuan. Our
company was incorporated as J Ambrose & Partners Trust Sdn
Bhd on 7 January 1991 and obtained its trust company licence on
28 January 1991, the sixth trust company to be licenced in Labuan.
We officially started operation on 1 February 1991. The company
was a partnership between Datuk Joseph Ambrose Lee and myself,
the first among local boys with big ambitions to be provider of
international offshore financial services.
I remember receiving a call from Datuk Joseph
Lee in late 1990. And it was from this telephone call that the
idea of setting up J Ambrose & Partners Trust was mooted.
I met Datuk Lee in 1982 when both of us were sent (actually exiled
would be the proper word to use) to Labuan to set up branches
of the firms we worked for. Datuk Lee worked for a legal firm
and I worked for an accounting firm then. Our offices were in
the same building but in different floors. By 1990, both of us
had our own firms. Datuk by that time had made it big in Labuan
and I was still a small and up start accounting practitioner.
We agreed in the telephone conversation that the local boys must
enter the offshore financial services industry in order to show
the world that there was dependable local expertise as well. So
Datuk Lee provided the capital and I set up the necessary infrastructure
to have the company going. We started off with no employee and
I myself was doing all the work. We managed to break even in the
very first year of operation.
Our knowledge and expertise as well as our excellence
customer services attracted Jardine Matheson Trust Corporation
of Jersey to take notice of us. JMTC was a wholly owned subsidiary
of Jardines Matheson of Hong Kong, one of the Taipans in the early
1900s. JMTC, Datuk Lee and myself entered into a joint venture
agreement in September 1993 and I was only a minority shareholder
then. To reflect the joint venture, the name of the company was
changed to Matheson Ambrose Trust Sdn Bhd.
Jardine Matheson Group and Datuk Lee disposed
off their interests in Matheson Ambrose Trust in September 2000
and I became the sole owner of the trust company. With this change
of shareholder, the brand name “Matheson” could not
be used as part of our name.
So we held a contest in the office for the staff
to come out with the best name for our change of name. Several
names were offered and we finally settled on the name “Noblehouse”.
Our choice of the name “Noblehouse” was influenced
by the novels of James Clavell who wrote the best sellers “Tai
Pan”, “Noblehouse” and many others. There was
this link of Jardines in the novels and I was truly fascinated
with the grandeur and business empire of the Tai Pans. And so,
the name “Noblehouse” was adopted.
On 14 April 2004, Noblehouse International Trust
Sdn Bhd became Noblehouse International Trust Ltd when all trust
companies were required to be converted to offshore companies
by law.
Being involved in the offshore service industry
since the inception of Labuan as an IOFC has been a truly educating
and wonderful experience for me personally. When Labuan was first
declared an IOFC, there was sceptism from critics whether Labuan
will be able to make it and I believe Labuan has proved these
critics wrong. Labuan is still going on strong and the regulating
authority, Labuan Offshore Financial Services Authority, has kept
up with global changes and ensure that Labuan has successfully
complied with international financial standards of compliances,
such as IMF and the OCED.
I am very proud that Noblehouse could be counted
as one of these success stories. Noblehouse started off as a two
directors operations and today I have 12 staff under my wings.
We are not one of the BIG BOYS in town but neither are we the
SMALLEST. But I do believe we could be counted to deliver the
best personal customer service to our customers. In order to commemorate
with our 15th Anniversary (2006) we also launch our company tag-line
- “We deliver what you REALLY want”. We are now putting
the need of our customers in priority to the products we offered.
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