Prominently on display in Kwek Leng Beng's office is a gold-plated machine gun. It was a gift from Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia (see p. 76), a fellow billionaire with whom Kwek purchased the trophy Plaza Hotel in New York City in 1995 for $325 million. The memento stands as a fitting metaphor for the hard-charging yet coolly calculated way in which Kwek is building a first-class hotel operation. "I would emphasize," he tells FORBES GLOBAL in a rare interview, "that I am not emotional."
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