Conversation with Soo Chuen Tan: A Journey from Law to Investing
Soo Chuen is a distinguished investor with a heart of gold. Beyond his professional accomplishments, he invests resources and time to help those in need, including students from the Z Club.
Soo Chuen, President and portfolio manager at Discerene Group, has traveled on a singular journey from growing up in Malacca, Malaysia to developing into an accomplished global investor. Before founding Discerene, Soo Chuen honed his skills at prestigious firms such as Deccan Value Advisors, the Baupost Group, Halcyon Asset Management, and McKinsey & Company. His academic achievements include earning a Master of Business Administration (high distinction) degree from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor/Master of Arts (double first-class honours) degree in Law/Jurisprudence from Oxford University. In his free time, Soo Chuen enjoys travelling, reading, painting, and mentoring young professionals.
Today, we want to share Soo Chuen's journey because, beyond his accomplishments, Soo Chuen possesses a heart of gold. Discerene supports many scholars from underprivileged backgrounds and provides them with the financial means to pursue higher education. One such scholar, Wang Ying, is a Chinese student from the Z Club. In addition to supporting Wang Ying’s education, Soo Chuen also enjoys spending time sharing his knowledge with Z Club members every year.
Please read on to learn from this remarkable man.
Soo Chuen with his dad and nephew in Singapore
From Science to Law to Investing: A Journey of Discovery
Soo Chuen's childhood in Malaysia was deeply rooted in academics. Both his parents were high-school physics teachers. Despite his early academic focus on science and maths, Soo Chuen had a passion for the law because of the logic of the discipline and his fascination with how a society creates rules governing human behaviour. However, though he excelled at law at Oxford University, he learned while interning at law firms that he was more interested in the underlying businesses of the clients he was working with than the legal issues he was working on with them.
Soo Chuen with Discerene team members at an Amazon fulfilment center tour
When he graduated from Oxford University (where he was top of his law school class), Soo Chuen joined McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm, in New York City. At McKinsey, he benefited from being a fly on the wall at companies grappling with different strategic and operational challenges across multiple industries. After completing his analyst program at McKinsey, the firm paid for Soo Chuen to pursue his MBA at Harvard Business School.
It was during his time at business school, when he was 25 years old, that Soo Chuen was introduced to value investing. He was especially inspired by Warren Buffett's investment principles and writings. After some reflection, Soo Chuen made the difficult decision to repay McKinsey for his MBA education so that he could freely pursue a career in investing after graduating from Harvard. It was a decision that he has not regretted.
Discerene team members in Omaha for the 2024 Berkshire Hathaway AGM
The Founding of Discerene: A Story of Vision and Grit
In 2010, driven by a 33-year-old’s idealism and a desire to build a long-term enterprise that was the fullest expression of his investment philosophy and values, Soo Chuen launched his own investment firm, Discerene Group.
Discerene’s launch was not an easy undertaking in the wake the global financial crisis, especially because Soo Chuen did not have a standalone investment track record. Soo Chuen was undeterred. He wanted to pursue build a 50-year (or longer) global investment partnership that followed Buffett's principles of long-term value investing. Soo Chuen placed a high value on honesty and integrity, stewardship and partnership-mindedness, intellectual rigor and personal drive in the pursuit of excellence, long-term mindedness, and first-principles-based thinking in pursuit of truth. These core values became fundamental to Discerene's culture.
It's been 14 years since Discerene’s founding, and Soo Chuen remains just as idealistic and committed to the Discerene investment enterprise and culture. In order to achieve its goal of compounding capital generationally, Discerene focuses on building truly long-term relationships with partners, including investors, employees, and portfolio companies. He believes that the foundations upon which he built the firm 14 years ago will continue to sustain it for the next 36 years and beyond. Along the way, Soo Chuen also intends to leave a meaningful legacy of mentoring young professionals and helping them along their respective journeys. He wants to enable folks to make thought-through decisions, find their calling, and be willing to take risks to pursue them, just like he did.
Soo Chuen with the late Charlie Munger
Cultivating a Culture of Giving: The Discerene Scholarship Program
Discerene's scholarship program reflects a commitment to identifying and supporting talented and hardworking individuals from underprivileged backgrounds in various developing countries, including China, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, and (soon) Ghana. The scholarship provides comprehensive support for their university education.
Believing that mentorship and personal connections can be even more important than financial aid for its scholars, the firm also seeks to create a support network for them. To help the firm achieve its giving goals, Discerene actively seeks out opportunities to collaborate with and support organizations that are committed to creating educational opportunities for and nurturing the next generation of leaders, including the Z Club. Through these efforts, Discerene hopes to live out another of its core values, which is to “do good and make a positive difference.”
Soo Chuen's giving goes beyond the superficial. He is genuinely interested in the personal lives of those he mentors. Beyond sponsoring Wang Ying's university studies, Soo Chuen is also investing time to get to know her. For example, a member of his team, Bowen Dai, visited her at the end of 2023, and Soo Chuen will be visiting her in Chengdu this summer. Soo Chuen has also introduced Wang Ying to other Discerene scholars, allowing her to meet peers in countries she would otherwise not have had the opportunity to interact with.
Soo Chuen as a speaker for one of the 'Meet the Investor' sharing sessions with the Z Club
On Gratitude and Giving Back
Soo Chuen encourages students and alumni to embrace an attitude of gratefulness and to give back. Speaking from personal experience, he emphasizes the personal fulfilment that comes from supporting others. Soo Chuen advocates cultivating a habit of giving early in life.
Soo Chuen points out that one often gets back more than one gives. For example, Soo Chuen hired a Z Club alumnus, Alaedine Belhouari, right after he graduated from Columbia University. Read our interview with Alaedine here for more context on how their relationship began. Soo Chuen shares how mentoring Alaedine enriched his own life.
I went to Morocco to visit with Alaedine. His mom, extended family, and friends could not be any more welcoming and gracious. I learned a lot about Moroccan culture, history, society, economics, and hospitality. I made wonderful friends. His mom has come to visit in Connecticut since. Who knew that I would have had all these wonderful experiences, just because I agreed to, at the request of a good friend, spend a few minutes talking to a kid from Morocco who’d won a Z Club stock picking contest?
Soo Chuen points to psychological research that shows that having rewarding personal relationships is important to personal happiness and fulfilment. In addition to cultivating such relationships, Soo Chuen also encourages young folks to find challenging and meaningful goals that they are passionate about, can commit to, and are willing to work hard towards.
Soo Chuen's journey from law to investing and founding his own firm illustrates the transformative power of vision, passion, courage, and perseverance. Through Discerene, he seeks not just financial success from the long-term compounding of capital but also opportunities to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others. His commitment to personal integrity, professional excellence, and giving back to others serves as an inspiration for aspiring investors, social entrepreneurs, and others seeking to make their own distinctive contributions.