Born in Brunei, Kevin is an impact-focussed entrepreneur who has successfully started, bought, built, fixed, scaled up, and sold businesses across a range of industries—including software, education, funds management, media, road infrastructure services, solar power, and electric vehicles. He has exited multiple businesses and successfully led five IPOs across the NASDAQ, ASX, and NZX exchanges as well as originated four fund vehicles (listed and unlisted). After a decade in working life, Kevin’s entrepreneurial journey commenced in 2003 with the startup and scaleup of an ice cream business that spanned Australia and Southeast Asia. The following year saw him lead a consortium to privatise, turnaround, and globally scale up the enterprise AI software company, RuleBurst Haley, which was then acquired by Oracle in 2008. The story of RuleBurst Haley is chronicled in the book HyperTurnaround! With extensive hands-on experience in strategic and operational management in the SME/emerging companies space, Kevin has served as Chairman, CEO, CFO, and COO of various enterprises across a range of industries, often taking the lead when there is a complex turnaround or a growing pains inflection point to deal with.
Kevin’s primary strategic and operational expertise includes the art of scaling up businesses (specifically navigating growing pains issues and inflection points for enterprises experiencing exponential rates of growth) and leading companies through distressed and complex turnaround situations. His previous experience covers investment management (private equity and mezzanine credit), direct funds management (equities in Australia and Asia), fund of funds management (Asia and hedge funds), mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, litigation support, and forensic accounting. Kevin has worked for LFG, J.P. Morgan, PwC, and Deloitte.
A global citizen, Kevin has lived and done business in Australasia, Southeast Asia, the US, and the UK. He currently divides his time between the UK, Southeast Asia, and Australia. Kevin holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of New South Wales where he was part of the inaugural cohort of Co-op Scholars in the School of Banking and Finance. He is also a qualified Chartered Accountant (Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand) and a Fellow of FINSIA (the Financial Services Institute of Australasia) where he lectured in postgraduate subjects including Advanced Industrial Equities Analysis and Corporate Finance.
The secret to success? Unbreakable resilience and a long-term mindset.
The best part of working at Arowana? Each day brings a different set of challenges and turning these challenges into opportunities is the essence of entrepreneurship.
