Banking on life's lessons (Amended)

LIM Cheng Teck's foray into the working world began 31 years ago with a banker telling him that he was not good enough for the job.

"I applied to two banks, and the first bank that I went to was an investment bank," Mr Lim, who is currently the Asean chief executive for Standard Chartered Bank, tells The Business Times. "I shan't tell you which one. I remember the interview, and I think it went rather nicely. I went into the first round and second round, and the interviewer told me, 'We like you, we like your passion, we like your enthusiasm, but we need people with accounting background'.

"You need to be trained in accountancy, because back then investment banking was very much looking at balance sheets, looking at M&A, so that's a very important kind of competency that you should have," says Mr Lim, who had graduated from the National University of Singapore having read economics and statistics.