Brand non grata

“I certainly know how to pick my employers,” he joked. He was a finance guy who had previously worked for Barings Bank, then Lehman Brothers. At the time we met in 2009 he held a senior position at UBS.¹

I found myself thinking of him again recently.

My first full-time job was in management consulting. I was hired by a well-known global firm and joined as a recent graduate in March 2006, marking this month the 20th anniversary of my professional working life. Yes, the timing of this piece on branding is intentional. It felt like a good moment for some reflections and to share a few key lessons from that journey.

When I joined Accenture, I had some more senior colleagues who had previously worked for Arthur Andersen Consulting.

Arthur Andersen Consulting separated from the audit firm Arthur Andersen in 2000 and rebranded as Accenture in 2001. Shortly thereafter, the Enron scandal led to the collapse of Arthur Andersen’s audit practice, one of the most significant corporate failures in modern history.

Accenture, having already separated, continued independently and built a new global brand. That brand has grown strong over the years as has the firm it represents. And just to be very clear, the title here is not about Accenture.

But I was reminded of that rebranding story.

This is about something else.

A much more recent event.

And it has a deeply personal context.

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A view from above

I live in Hong Kong and have done so for some years. It is the most vertical city in the world, and just like almost everyone else here, I live in a residential high-rise building.

My apartment is on the 36th floor and I have the most spectacular and beautiful view of the surroundings and the South China Sea. Most of the time, I just feel very happy and privileged to live like this.

A few days every year I honestly do not love it. That is when typhoons strike the city, or pass too near. Then being almost at the top of a high-rise feels a bit too adventurous for my liking.

The strong noise from the wind whistles as it presses through the small gaps between the walls and windows. The ceiling pendant lamps sway slowly back and forth, not only from the small wind gusts finding their way into my living room, but also from the movement of the building itself.

Yes, the building is supposed to move a little during typhoons. It helps protect the building structure. It is a rather unpleasant experience, but we are well protected.

I have been through a couple of T10 typhoons (the highest level here) and more T9 and T8 typhoons than I can remember. There are always fallen trees and damage to some building exteriors.

During the worst ones I have seen balconies blown off. Windows shattered and people’s belongings blown out to the sea below.

But stay indoors on the quiet side of the building, well away from exposed windows, and you are safe. Unpleasant, yes, but I do not worry too much.

Same with the Black and Red rains.

What I really worry about is fire.

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When risk becomes real

I have experienced a fire in my building.

Unlike typhoons and heavy rains there was, of course, no prior warning.

There were a few apartments in my building that were undergoing construction work. That is normally the case as the building was completed in the mid-1980s and there is always some maintenance and repair work to be done when a tenant moves out.

One day some of my neighbours suddenly witnessed a fire on the scaffolding outside one of the apartments. Seemingly out of the blue, but we were told later it was probably caused by a cigarette. The fire spread to some other construction work further down in the same tower and finally a spark lit up the bushes underneath.

The residential building I live in has several hundred apartments, organised in ten different towers, or blocks. There is a fire station nearby and the fire brigade arrived within a few minutes, quickly putting out the fire. It never spread, except vertically as described, and it was only on small parts of the building exterior and never inside.

The damage was relatively minor. We were still quite shaken by this event though.

One neighbour, who lived immediately upstairs from where the fire started, moved out. The rest of us remain more cautious.

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Unexpected urgency

Three months ago, on 26 November 2025, this city experienced the worst fire disaster in more than seven decades. Wang Fuk Court was a massive residential complex in Hong Kong. The final death toll from the Wang Fuk Court fire stands at 168 people. Many of them were young children and elderly people, the youngest being a six-month-old baby and the oldest a 98-year-old. Some of the victims were foreign domestic helpers caring for these children and elderly residents, with their own families depending on them in their home countries.

I was deeply shaken by this devastating fire. We all were. Most of us live in high rises too, and it made it very real. It was like a collective understanding that it could have been us, or our loved ones. It was heartbreaking and shocking for the entire community.

What happened next was a community stepping up, making donations and offering support in all possible ways. So many people were trying to help that the authorities had to ask them to refrain from going too near Wang Fuk Court, to avoid traffic congestion that could block emergency vehicles. The lines for donating blood were long everywhere, with people who went spontaneously to donate blood, and some locations were completely fully booked for scheduled appointments. I believe that everyone who could do something to help did something, and that was comforting to experience.

Three months have passed now. The victims continue receiving help to move on. Among the most recent news is that the Hong Kong authorities propose to spend about HK$4 billion ($512 million) to buy out the Wang Fuk Court homeowners. The actual cost is estimated to be substantially more (about HK$6.8 billion) but is expected to be partially covered by the relief fund, currently about HK$2.8 billion, and insurance compensation.

Many have contributed to that relief fund, both individuals as well as companies and different organisations. The financial support is reportedly sufficient for both homeowners and other directly and indirectly affected victims, such as the foreign domestic helpers’ families overseas. The scale of support is quite remarkable and will help them move on with their lives.

Naturally, the victims will never forget the disaster. Nor will anyone else here. Last time I checked, some 30 people from different companies had been arrested. The investigations are expected to take years, and much is unknown at this point.

What is crystal clear to me, however, is that any brand negatively associated with the disaster has become “brand non grata” here.

That has, most unexpectedly, given me the urgency I needed to focus more on personal brand building.

But this is not only about me.

Remember the finance guy?

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What I have come to understand

Looking back at his journey, and reflecting on my own, I have come to understand something important.

We easily rely on corporate brands when building our own reputation. It seems to make sense. They are large, established, and appear stable. They feel too big to fail².

Until something highly unexpected disrupts that entire assumption and you are suddenly on your own.

In that moment, you may wish you had invested earlier in building your personal brand, more intentionally and more independently from any corporate brand.

One more thing.

I promised that my next long-form piece would be about Wealth.
So what is this, then?
This is fundamentally a risk management question.

And risk management is closely tied to Wealth.

Wealth, as I recently discussed, extends beyond monetary wealth.

Wealth is resilience.

Resilience is options.

Options require that your value is not entirely tied to an institution.

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Footnotes

¹ You might recall that Barings Bank collapsed in 1995 after massive unauthorised trading losses in Singapore. It was one of the oldest merchant banks in Britain at the time.

Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, becoming the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history and a defining moment of the global financial crisis.

UBS also faced severe difficulties during the 2008–2009 financial crisis. The bank required substantial government support from the Swiss authorities in 2008 due to heavy losses linked to U.S. mortgage-backed securities. In the years that followed, UBS underwent significant restructuring and refocused on wealth management.

More recently, in 2023, UBS acquired Credit Suisse in a government-brokered rescue deal after Credit Suisse experienced a rapid loss of confidence and liquidity.

² “Too Big to Fail” refers to the belief, widely discussed during the 2008–2009 global financial crisis, that certain financial institutions were so large and interconnected that their failure would pose systemic risk to the entire financial system, leading governments to intervene with extraordinary support measures. In practice, however, the outcomes varied. Lehman Brothers was allowed to collapse in September 2008, triggering global shockwaves, while other institutions such as UBS required significant government support to stabilise and survive. The assumption of safety attached to size and brand proved far more fragile than many had believed.