Tony Tyler was determined to find work abroad after he graduated with an Oxford law degree in 1977. After applying to a smattering of shipping and logistics groups he discovered Swire, the British-owned, pan-Asian conglomerate.
“They said: ‘Look, you go out to Hong Kong . . . to work in the east and you’ll never come back,’” said Tyler, who joined the company that year and went on to lead Cathay Pacific, the airline it controls, from 2007 to 2011. “I thought: ‘Perfect, that’s exactly what I want.’”
For decades, adventurous graduates from British universities travelled halfway across the globe to Hong Kong, where they joined elite schemes at one of the colonial-era trading houses or conglomerates, beginning a varied and treated career rotating through the diverse range of their Asian businesses.
But these programmes have become a rarity as critics argue the model is outdated and inefficient. HSBC terminated its “International Manager” programme last year, while Jardine Matheson, one of the territory’s oldest and largest trading houses, axed its executive trainee scheme as part of a major restructuring in 2024.
Swire is one of the last holdouts. Executives, analysts and former trainees said its programmes’ continued existence reflected the sustained influence of the group’s controlling family, drawing a contrast with Jardines, which has overhauled its conglomerate model to improve shareholder returns.
“My understanding is that the Swire family is still very much involved in running the group,” said David Blennerhassett, an analyst at Quiddity Advisors. “The management trainees are sort of seen as an ‘extension of the family’ — selected by senior leadership in London to represent and continue the Swire legacy.”
Founded as a Liverpool textile trader in 1816, the company’s interests include the distribution rights for Coca-Cola in much of Asia, commercial and residential properties across the region and a stake in Cathay Pacific that in effect gives it control. Its Hong Kong-listed entity, Swire Pacific, has a market capitalisation of more than HK$100bn (US$12.8bn) and made revenues of HK$82bn in 2024.
Every year, the group hires a handful of graduates directly into its family-owned holding company, John Swire & Sons, grooming them for senior management. Most of Swire Pacific’s leadership — including chair Guy Bradley, three out of four of its executive directors and the chief executives of its property and aviation engineering units — are graduates of its trainee schemes, which include a programme that hires more experienced finance professionals.
“It’s still one of our most important sources of leadership talent,” said a senior executive who graduated from one of the trainee schemes. “I don’t see that changing.”
Another senior executive, also a programme graduate, said the company had seen record applications in recent years. The executive added that to “differentiate” itself, Swire had allocated more resources to perks including access to private boats and seaside villas on Hong Kong’s outlying islands, though a number of these privileges are also available to some non-trainee staff.
Trainees are managed by a separate group-level human resources unit that rotates them frequently throughout the conglomerate. As well as maintaining company values across a sprawling business, the system gives Swire flexibility to respond quickly to crises, said the second executive.
When Cathay chair John Slosar and chief executive Rupert Hogg stepped down within weeks of each other in 2019, “we had people in roles the next day”, said the executive. Their resignations had followed criticism from leaders in Beijing about the airline’s refusal to prevent staff from joining anti-government protests in Hong Kong.
But a senior executive at another Hong Kong company said hiring some employees at the group level and others into subsidiaries could create a “spy culture” whereby staff felt their loyalty was to the holding company. Some holding company hires can end up motivated by the perks offered to them rather than maximising returns, they added.
Jardines, which appointed former private equity partner Lincoln Pan last year to lead a strategic overhaul, has slimmed the ranks of its holding company and required employees hired into its executive trainee scheme to join individual portfolio businesses.
A former senior executive said Jardines’ trainee programme had become less tenable as the group professionalised its businesses, while its diverse range of portfolio companies made it harder for trainees to gain useful specialised skills.
“It’s that big debate . . . is a talented amateur better than a professional?” said Richard Harris, founder of Port Shelter Investment Management, who was rejected from Swire and Jardines’ schemes in his late twenties as “too old” but later led Jardine Fleming, the group’s investment banking joint venture. “I personally . . . don’t think there’s anything wrong with [training] an elite cadre of managers.”
Jardines’ overhaul has led to a share price boost of nearly 90 per cent over the past 12 months. It now trades at a price-to-book ratio of 0.79, according to a Bloomberg poll of analysts, compared with 0.42 for Swire Pacific, suggesting a steeper discount.
“Swire operates across a diverse portfolio . . . and we need leaders who can think broadly, move between businesses and geographies, and carry a consistent set of values across the group,” the company said, adding that the high proportion of its leadership derived from the graduate trainee programme was evidence of its success.
In recent years, the company has diversified its intake. In the graduate programme’s most recent round, more than half of applicants were from mainland China and just under a third from Hong Kong, with only 3 per cent from the UK, according to figures seen by the FT.
Ultimately, said Tyler, the schemes have survived because Swire remains a family company.
“For the Swires, the whole thing is not just to maximise profit in the next quarter, it’s to hand over a successful company to the next generation,” he said. “They want to make sure that they have a cadre of people who they know well and know they can trust.”
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