My father – a billionaire of Vietnamese origin in New Island

When asked if Mr. Dang had 6 billion USD, Ms. Nguyet half jokingly said: “My father has no money in his pocket”. And then she said, “Actually, my father has more than that.”

For him, only economic independence is the most valuable independence. From a very early age, he understood that the future is not about closing oneself, but tightening interdependence.

He placed his broad relationship with global partners above the narrow relationship between colony and home country. In relation to his global partners, he has mastery skills.

Mr. Etienne Dutailly – editor of the satirical monthly magazine Le Chien Bleu in New Island – once gave an interview on television: “I once asked him why he spoke bad Vietnamese, bad French, bad English. , but you meet many presidents, negotiate with many big businesses? He said when negotiating, you have to know what people need. And he knows what partners need.”

In fact, all partners and opponents do not know what Mr. Dang will do, because he has his own way of calculating. Two French journalists who wrote the book Mystère Dang evaluated Mr. Dang’s way of doing business “like playing Go, he built his territory, placed chess pieces, and deceived the opponent.

His detractors claim his intelligence is on the same level as those of dishonest people, while his defenders hail him as a genius.”

Believing in himself, André Dang does not like to delegate authority or share responsibility with anyone, but only believes in a small group of close people, sometimes family members.

At his company SMSP, there is not a single decision without his guarantee of liability. To consolidate absolute power, he put insurmountable barriers between the plans he built.

He has full control over everything, no matter how small. Running a company with many international branches like a father in the family, the more modern and avant-garde vision he has, the more conservative he is in the economic world. day-to-day management at the enterprise.

Always on the alert, he thoroughly thought through his ideas by listening to others and those close to him, commanding him to report back to him every little piece of useful information. Thanks to international networks and thanks to his intuition that rarely goes against him, he develops bold strategies, breaking old habits.

He never gave up. He never gave up, yielded to difficulties and obstacles. For him, no matter what the right path, he doesn’t mind, as long as he achieves the set goal. That was confirmed by the fact that he got rich quickly while living in exile in Australia for several years.

In the marketplace, the giants of the nickel industry had to take their hats off to admire his negotiating steps. He unleashed the fog, he negotiated fiercely until the last minute with the conditions set unchanged. Therefore, it can be seen that the Kanak natives chose the right man to work for them.

Mr. Dang himself also devoted himself to bringing the most profit to the Kanak people, because in his heart, it was like a response to the low-minded people. He worked for many years in the mining company and then raised it to the level of a corporation. André Dang has a physical endurance that few people can match, a work so hard that it becomes an obsession.

He always did his best. In addition to a few golf sessions, prioritized for the sake of business relationships, Mr. Dang rarely considers himself entitled to rest. He worked no hours and imposed that strict pace on those around him. At the age of 70, he still wakes up at three in the morning to monitor the stock index and prepare work files.

Therefore, after he worked without pay because he himself was rich, the Kanaks thought of paying him with an 8% stake in the nickel mining corporation. Calculated by the value of nickel, which has skyrocketed recently because of the very high demand of the world, that asset must be in the tens of billions of dollars.

“But recently my father has divided that part of the property among his three children,” said Ms. Nguyet. Therefore, according to her, her father is no different from “a billionaire without money”. Indeed, many times he did not have a penny in his pocket, not even a check.

He entrusts all logistical expenses to his wife. “I’m a good salesman because I always get to the finish line, but I’m a bad buyer,” he often jokes. But everyone understands that in his person is the thrift attached from a poor childhood.

Mrs. Nguyet often talks about a photo of her father hanging at work in a nickel mining corporation. The picture hanging on the wall is the mine where Dang’s father used to be a husband and died. Ms. Nguyet said it reflected “the irony of fate”, because Mr. Dang was now on the board of the mine.

Mr. Dang never hid his Vietnamese origin, but it is difficult for anyone to know what he thought about his childhood circumstances. Just know that, now every time he has the opportunity to go to the mines in the north of the island, he will stop by the cemetery in Voh, where his father lies after a tragic work accident.