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This article was first published in the February 2016 Malaysia edition of Accounting and Business magazine.

You could easily mistake Ng Kok Ming FCCA as just one of the thousands of aspiring Gen Y executives who throng the streets in rush hour. In fact, Ng is not your typical up-and-coming young executive seeking to climb the corporate ladder.

Aged just 33, in January he became head of regional commercial finance for Asia Pacific at US-based company Mattel, the world’s largest toymaker by revenue, following two years as head of finance for the iconic toy company’s South-East Asian markets. 

‘A toy company is very interesting. It was Mattel’s products and the legacy of the brand that made me join them. We have so many iconic and billion-dollar brands like Barbie, Hot Wheels, Thomas & Friends and Fisher-Price, which are older than I am.

‘I am very curious about how we can bring these global brands closer to the children and distribute more to them, because these are really high-quality toys which give very good play experience,’ Ng explains. He collects some of the toys the company produces himself. ‘I buy some of the toys, including some of the Hot Wheels for myself,’ he admits. 

Ng says his first child was just two months old when Mattel approached him back in 2013. ‘I thought, “What could be a better time to join Mattel?’’ My daughter is one of the very lucky kids to have a father who works in a toy company. She now has a range of Barbie dolls, Thomas & Friends train sets and Fisher-Price toys at home to play with,’ he adds. 

‘From a personal and career point of view, I was intrigued by Mattel – both the products and the culture of the company.’ He explains that the company is very focused towards play. ‘We call our sports club “Play at Mattel”, and there are messages posted around office about play patterns and the value of play. We need to enjoy our work, and while working hard we need to play hard as well,’ Ng says.

His job at Mattel, with its emphasis on creativity and innovation, contrasts significantly with his first post after graduation, at Ernst & Young, where he was involved in auditing financial institutions. ‘Being in the financial services sector, it was very regulated, and companies have to comply with Securities Commission and Bank Negara rulings under the Banking and Financial Institutions Act (Bafia).’

While working at Ernst & Young Malaysia from 2004 to 2008, Ng studied for his ACCA Qualification. He subsequently had stints with British American Tobacco (BAT) and Energizer in Singapore, where he was regional finance manager, Asia Pacific, before Mattel lured him back to Kuala Lumpur.

A fashion company

Ng imagines many people would think that all three companies  – BAT, Energizer and Mattel – operate in the fast-moving consumer goods industry, but, he says, ‘Mattel is actually both a consumer product and a fashion company at the same time.’ He cites as evidence that Mattel’s products change every six months. ‘We have our spring-line lists and we have our fall-line lists. And to keep children interested in our toys, we always launch new products and innovation.

‘For other consumer products companies, you may not change your products that frequently. You may change your packaging, but you don’t change your products over the years. A battery is a battery, a cigarette is a cigarette, whereas you see a toy changing every six months. 

‘We have new iterations of Barbie, we have our spring entertainment range, we have our fall entertainment range, we have our yearly collectors’ range. There’s just so many new SKUs [stock keeping units] coming in every six months.’

And what makes it more challenging, Ng says, is that ‘we have so many brands within Mattel. Barbie, the most popular fashion doll ever produced, is complex enough [on its own].’ 

Over the years, Mattel has created and acquired a significant number of brands and the portfolio now includes more than 15, the core brands being Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price and Thomas & Friends; others are Monster High, Ever After High, Mega Bloks, Scrabble, UNO, Pictionary and Barney. ‘They are like a conglomerate of toy brands,’ says Ng, adding that in its boys’ business unit, the company’s key brand is Hot Wheels. ‘We have a Hot Wheels plant in Penang, Malaysia that produces more cars than Toyota produces globally in a year; it is one of the largest Hot Wheels plants in the world.’ 

So, one wonders, what impact does having so many brands have on the finance side of the business?

‘As a finance person, you need to understand the product and you need to understand the key activation periods. Seasonality becomes very important with our sales forecasts,’ Ng explains. ‘As it affects our supply chain management, you have to understand the key activation or campaign periods. For example, we have the Christmas campaigns, the mid-year school holiday campaigns, the Chinese New Year campaigns. We work very closely with our commercial and supply chain teams on this.’

For Ng, the complexities are magnified, as he is responsible for overseeing the finance function for Mattel’s Asia-Pacific operations, which include markets such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia. 

‘Yes, you have to understand the various markets and their dynamics. For example, in Indonesia, the Lebaran/Ramadan holiday is a key season for us. In Malaysia, the year-end and Christmas holiday season is number one. In the Philippines, Christmas is the most important. 

‘We run the gamut across diversified cultures and economies in South-East Asia – from the largest Muslim-populated country in the world (Indonesia) and one of the world’s largest Roman Catholic countries (the Philippines) to the third-richest country in the world by GDP (Singapore), nested within a cluster of promising emerging markets. So we have to make sure we are ready with the right stocks for the right key selling seasons.’ 

Apart from the marketing and distribution challenges, Ng says the finance head needs to grasp and manage the impact of external factors. For Mattel and many other companies in the region, the weakening of South-East Asian currencies against the US dollar in the past year has been a particularly difficult challenge. 

‘All the CFOs I speak to in Malaysia and South-East Asia are confronting the same problem. All of us face currency issues this year [2015], especially for US or US-headquartered companies, as our reporting currency is always the US dollar.

‘The weakening of the Indonesian rupiah and Malaysian ringgit really hit us badly, since they are among our largest markets in South-East Asia.’

Ng and the Mattel management team have had to grapple with the issue of how to deal with foreign exchange risks. ‘How do we want to hedge the currencies becomes a very important discussion topic for the management team in Malaysia and our other South-East Asian markets,’ he says. 

The age conundrum

Perhaps one of biggest hurdles Ng has faced in his career is having to prove that despite his relatively young age he has what it takes to occupy senior leadership positions – that he’s ‘the real deal’, as he puts it.

For example, at BAT he was promoted to become the finance manager for the group’s global IT transformation project. Aged just 27, his job required him to collaborate with project managers based in hubs around the world, such as the UK, Asia and South America. ‘At times I was having conference calls with global project managers twice my age. It is a very fine balance, learning how to influence the decisions of stakeholders who are senior in both age and experience,’ Ng says.

‘I guess communication becomes very important when you start speaking to people of different cultures. During my two-and-a-half years in BAT it was all about learning the soft skills of management. You have to spend more time understanding the business and understanding the stakeholders,’ he adds.

Ng says his ACCA Qualification helped him in this area. ‘Having ACCA gives a good foundation; it gives you the confidence to make your decisions and communicate them to your stakeholders. If you are technically strong, you are more confident of your recommendations and you are more able to convince them.’

He faced a similar situation when he moved to Mattel. ‘The CFOs and finance directors of the other markets are relatively older than me. So when we gather for our regional finance councils of Asia-Pacific, I am currently the youngest. My counterparts are often up to a decade more experienced than I am.’ 

However, Ng is not fazed by the challenge of having to prove his worth. In fact, he believes one of the reasons he has been promoted within Mattel is his willingness to ‘embrace my inexperience’, as he puts it.

‘By this I mean I recognise my inexperience. And I do consult and exchange notes with those more experienced than me, for example my boss, for certain decisions that I need their experience on.’ 

‘But I am also very passionate about making improvements. I don’t believe things should remain the same because they have always been done that way previously. This is something I learnt from both BAT and Energizer. 

‘I believe Mattel hired me because they believed I can bring a change to the company from both a personal culture standpoint as well as the process and practice one,’ says Ng.

‘I always tell my team: if you feel this is not the right way to do something, think of a better way to do it. As long as it adds value to the company and our stakeholders, brings in cost efficiencies and simplifies the process, I’m open for it.’ 

Ng has also learnt that creativity and innovation are things to strive for in any organisation. ‘Being a finance professional shouldn’t stop you doing things differently, and improving at every opportunity.’

Reflecting on the latter half of his career, Ng says it has been about understanding the commercial aspects of the company, and the environment it competes in, and ‘how can we provide the company with an edge over our competitors, winning market share by using financially derived insights to influence business decisions’.

MK Lee, journalist