Disproportionately few, however, walk the walk, because in some cases it’s inconvenient, tiresome and involves time-consuming effort, and in others it’s simply too expensive. An analogy can be drawn with vegetables, if I may make so bold. We’d all like to eat organic fruit and veg, and products derived from our animal brethren who had happy lives while they still had a pulse and were sung lullabies before they were put to bed at night. But the alternatives are invariably cheaper, and it’s not everyone who has the privilege of making a choice. 

Blackstone investments doesn’t seem to be one of those companies, however, and under the tutelage of the vastly experienced Banerjee, is walking the walk with a casual strut and a slightly self-effacing gait. Its ethos is sound, and it appears to have developed organically (no correlation to fruit and vegetables) and now has US$684 billion in AUM (assets under management).

Blackstone is making all the right noises when it comes to accountability and transparency in what can often be a murky world, and Banerjee is entitled to share some of the ‘blame’ for this. He’s a man who managed to pivot from his role as an out-and-out accountant to someone who realised that the nuts and bolts of a company’s finance and way of doing business were but a small part of the overall picture. His background, however, informed his future development as both a businessman and a visionary; realising that the finance industry didn’t need to be rapacious, and that there were far greater rewards in doing business with integrity and a holistic mindset predicated on care, compassion and thoughtfulness.

As I interview Banerjee, via Zoom, regrettably, he can’t stop talking. His response to my first question lasts more than eight minutes, and I can’t get a word in edgewise. I’m not concerned. The man speaks with such enthusiasm and passion that cutting him off would be like telling a marathon runner that they need to take a break and have a cup of tea and a cigarette after ten miles of the race.

He has kind eyes that belie a fiery determination, and an acute intelligence that, in some ways, he still feels he has to prove. This shouldn’t be necessary for a man who sits on several multinational Boards and has an excellent business reputation, but it’s there anyway.

He talks about his ‘retirement’ from PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2012—he originally joined Price Waterhouse in 1982—with amusement. “When Steve (Schwarzman) was interviewing me, he said ‘why are you retiring at 58?’ and was surprised to hear that the retirement age for partners in PwC Singapore at that time was 58, a legacy of the firm’s colonial past, when most of the partners were British and after retiring went back to England or Scotland to do something quite different.” 

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Banerjee realised, however, that it didn’t have to work that way in Asia, and when Blackstone came a-calling, he was there to pick up. Schwarzman must have made the right overtures and hit the relevant warm buttons, and nine years later we’re looking at a man who’s both comfortable with himself and also with what he’s doing and the values he’s embodying. Blackstone is walking the walk, and Banerjee is happy to get in step. Could he possibly have imagined that he would be where he is today when starting as an undergraduate at Warwick University in the UK 40 years ago?

He spent the first 16 years of his life in Mumbai, then his family moved to Singapore. Two years later, he went to Warwick University so it was a lot of changes in a short of period of time. “I was new to England,” he says, “and as an 18-year-old, I wasn’t looking beyond the next few years. I just wanted to finish my course and get articled in London as a chartered accountant. But it was a very different place in those days, and to get into the big eight accountancy firms was an uphill task for a foreigner.”

Banerjee talks often about ‘belonging’. In Mumbai (then Bombay) he didn’t, being a Bengali, and when he attended a ‘red brick’ university in the UK, he must have felt that he belonged even less. In 1971, he would certainly have been, (a) remarkable and exotic (positive spin), or (b) stood out like a sore thumb (a slightly less positive spin, but probably still exotic). This sense of displacement, however and often experienced, has contributed greatly to his success, as he recognised (very early doors) that he was different in his current environment and would need to adapt. Perhaps this is what encouraged him to forge relationships and gather those around him to his bosom by operating with sincerity and integrity, giving them little choice but to embrace him in return.

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It could all have been so different had Banerjee been better at maths and physics as a young man. Many of his family members, particular his uncles, were engineers in India, and titans in their trade callings. Banerjee’s father was top of his class at a pukka engineering college in India, but it’s clear that he either didn’t want to—or didn’t have the confidence to—follow in his father’s (or his uncles’) footsteps. He noticed some of his peers travelling to England to study as chartered accountants—it wasn’t possible back in India at the time—and “realised that it was a passport into the business world.”

1982 was a big year for Banerjee. He got married, started working for Price Waterhouse in Singapore, and five years after graduating from Warwick University in the UK, had a proper job doing what he was trained and educated to do. There seemed to be a well-trodden path. He was soon disenchanted, however, by the limited opportunities in Singapore, dealing with small firms in the early stages of their development. He contemplated returning to the UK to further his studies at the London School of Economics, but family and colleagues encouraged him to stick it out in the Lion City, and the rest creates an interesting history.

Realising that accountancy wasn’t an end in itself but just a part of the overall sum, he appreciated the importance of balance—not just in the books, but in the landscape of a successful, modern company. It was the “enabler", as he puts it, the cornerstone and base structure of something larger and more important but still built on the solid foundations created by that balance. “It’s important to know how financial statements are put together,” says Banerjee, “as well as the governance and the risks that surround the process. But you can’t remain a number cruncher forever. For about 10 years after 1982, I got to understand the nitty gritty of accounting finance, after which I took on management roles in the firm; first in Singapore, then regionally, and subsequently in the global strategy council.”

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He worked on the IPO of SingTel in 1993, and began to discover that accountancy, and management in accountancy was as much about problem solving and finding solutions as it was about looking at numbers. “I’m always looking at it from different angles. Solving a problem can’t only be about you and your situation. You have to make sure that you’re getting the best outcome for everyone. And I always get a kick out of that. It’s what I’m doing now at Blackstone and makes the work so rewarding.”

Growing up in India, he was exposed to poverty and the effects of extreme income inequality and seemed to have made the call even as a teenager to “give back” wherever and whenever he could. “I have always wanted to leave things better than the way I found them,” he says, which explains many of the initiatives he has currently embarked on, at a personal level, as well as his length of tenure at previous companies.

Clearly he would like to see Singapore at the head of the table when it comes to technology and investments therein in Southeast Asia, and this appears to be in keeping with Blackstone’s brief. “Eighty of the world’s top 100 tech companies have their Asian headquarters in Singapore,” Banerjee rattles off, with a degree of pride. “And we have more than 4,000 tech-enabled start-ups.” I ask him if Singapore has a right to describe itself as Asia’s ‘Silicon Valley’, and he smiles.

“We’ve come a long way, and I’m quite proud of what Singapore has achieved.” The investment world has recognised the potential, and in sniffing out the relevant opportunities seems sanguine when it comes to making the necessary injections. This is what Blackstone is doing under Banerjee’s stewardship, and I can’t help thinking that not only do they have the right man for the job, but also that Banerjee has found a(nother) company in which he feels that he belongs and is quite prepared to uphold its meritocratic ethos and concentration on finding the right people for the right roles. There are no square pegs in round holes for Blackstone—a company that appears to put emphasis on smooth succession and spotlight specialisation.

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Banerjee was (and is) the right man in the right place at the right time through much of his life. And when he wasn’t, he adapted, always staying true to his values and sense of what he felt was right and proper. His career path hasn’t always been glittering, but it’s always been purposeful, and his current incarnation gives him a heft in the industry that’s impossible to ignore.

“What I’m doing influences what a lot of other people do,” he says, with nary a hint of arrogance. It’s true. He appears to have found an organisation that shares his values and priorities.

I’m sure he’ll be ‘retiring’ a few more times in his life, and subsequently taking up roles that both challenge and fulfil him. But, as he is, by his own admission, “more or less reaching the end post,” (it’s terribly unconvincing bearing in mind his boundless enthusiasm and obvious enjoyment when it comes to talking about what makes him tick) he still needs to belong. He does; and is fully prescient of the fact that if he “can do the last few years well, it will have been a meaningful and worthwhile journey”.