ABSTRACT
David mcleod had been general manager of the All-Asia Paper Co. (AAP), part of Changmai Corporation, for just two months. Bored by a job that had fallen into well-ordered routine, McLeod had eagerly responded to the challenge presented to him by Changmai's director of personnel, Barney Li, to take over as head of the five-year-old AAP pulp mill, one of the biggest in South East Asia, and double production within a year. As Li explained, the ethnic Chinese owner of the Changmai group, Tommy Goh, was dissatisfied by the performance of the mill, then headed by a Malaysian expatriate and producing on average 21,500 tons of pulp per month. Closest to him, apart from two family members working in the Changmai group, were those dating from his early days in the tough world of street trading, where he made his first million by the age of 24.
