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Nippon Paint partner Goh Cheng Liang is a Singaporean billionaire who owns the world’s largest tri-hulled superyacht – who is the owner of Wuthelam Holdings?

Goh Cheng Liang made his fortune through paints. Photo: Sohu
Goh Cheng Liang made his fortune through paints. Photo: Sohu

Goh Cheng Liang launched the Pigeon Brand paint business with some cheap old stock, and grew it into a partnership with global giant Nippon Paints – of which he now holds 60 per cent

Thanks to a long career in paints and wall coatings, Goh Cheng Liang has helped countless people around the world decorate their homes. That started in 1949 with the creation of his own paint brand called Pigeon, before a partnership with Nippon Paint, one of the biggest paint brands in the world, set Goh on the way to amassing a fortune.

Just this August, news of a merger between Goh’s Wuthelam Holdings and Nippon Paint made waves, bringing his overall stake in the brand to just a little below 60 per cent and leading to Forbes estimating his personal net worth at a colossal US$18.4 billion.

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But he wasn’t always on top of the world. Plenty of Asia’s billionaires come from humble backgrounds, and Goh was born to a jobless father and a mother who did laundry for work, living in a one-room tenement with his three sisters and brother. Seven people in the house was overwhelming at times, and this situation lasted until he was 12 years old.
 

When World War II came, he was sent to Muar in what was then called Malaya, where he helped his brother-in-law sell fishing nets. He then returned to Singapore in 1943 to start his own business selling aerated water. That didn’t go well so he worked in a hardware store for the next four and a half years.

Goh Cheng Liang, Wuthelam Holdings founder. Photo: Sohu
Goh Cheng Liang, Wuthelam Holdings founder. Photo: Sohu

His big break came in 1949 when he was able to buy some surplus stock at auction: rotting barrels of paint which, armed with his Chinese chemicals dictionary and knowledge from working in the hardware store, he started experimenting with. This was how his Pigeon Brand paint was born.