Business career
Early business ventures in manufacturing and gambling
As a teenager,Dhammika Perera started putting money into a street hawker who ran a business in front of his uncle's café. He then rented slot machines,installing them in his uncle's café. In 1987,dropping out of the NDT program,Perera went to Taiwan for three months of technical training. On his return to Sri Lanka,he started a machine manufacturing business making slot machines close to his residence in Payagala and continued until 1991,when President Ranasinghe Premadasa imposed a ban on jackpot/slot machines. Following the ban he moved into car sales in Paiyagala,before moving into the gambling business by starting his first casino in 1993,which is now owned and managed by his two brothers. [4] [2] [5] He also ran Tito Electronics,an electronic shop repairing electronic circuit boards in Colpetty. He started a business producing and selling neon bulbs in 1995,at a time when none of the manufacturers was keen on selling those bulbs. [3]
Corporate raider
In 1999,his business career took a new direction after he met Nadeem ul Haque,then senior resident representative of the International Monetary Fund in Sri Lanka,who became his mentor. Ul Haque organized a seminar for him on infrastructure and business development at KfW in Germany,where he learnt the use of mathematical modelling in business acquisitions and aspects of risk and cash-flow management. With Ul Haque he drew up a 20-year plan,targeting 12 sectors.
Banking and finance
He acquired a majority stake in Pan Asia Bank in 2000,at a time when the bank was regarded as a loss-making financial institution. [6] He met investor Nimal Perera after acquiring the Pan Asia Bank stake,who become his close business partner until the duo parted ways in 2017. [7] In 2003,his holding company Vallibel Holdings tookover LB Finance. He acquired the family-owned The Rupee Finance Company Limited in 2005,which was later rebranded as Vallibel Finance and took it to an initial public offering in 2010. He has been the executive director of Vallibel Finance since 2014.
Manufacturing,trading and leisure
In 2002,Dhammika Perera,through his Vallibel Holdings,bought controlling stakes in four companies in the stock market,having made short-term transactions during the bull run. In 2003,he took over Royal Ceramics having become the major shareholder and buying out minority shareholders. [8] That year he gained a 56.07% stake of Ruhunu Hotels and Travels Limited which owned Club Horizon Hotel,Koggala which was later renamed as The Fortress Resort &Spa. In 2008,Perera acquired a controlling stake in Hayleys PLC,the Sri Lankan conglomerate founded in 1878. In 2010,Perera's Vallibel One took over the Delmege Group,which had been founded in 1850. By 2013,Dhammika Perera and Nimal Perera had taken over majority control over Hayleys,becoming its co-chairman. [9] With Hayleys,Perera gained control over several subsidiaries owned by Hayleys,including Amaya Leisure,Haycarb,Hayleys Fabric PLC,The Kingsbury and Dipped Products. In 2013,Vallibel One-owned Royal Ceramics took over Lanka Ceramics PLC,and with it came Swisstek.
In 2013,Perera became Sri Lanka's wealthiest individual,with a net worth estimated by Forbes Asia at 72.6 billion LKR (approx. 550 million US dollars). [10]
Perera became the chairman of Lanka Tiles in 2017 and was appointed as the co-chairman of Singer (Sri Lanka) in October 2017 after Hayleys agreed to buy Singer. [11] [12] Perera was appointed as the chairman of Director Board of Lanka Ceramic PLC in 2017,but he resigned from the position on 31 August 2018. [13] He was also appointed as chairman of Board of Directors of Lanka Walltiles in 2017. [14]
Gambling
Perera continued to own three of the five casinos in Colombo,namely Bally's Colombo,Bellagio Colombo and The Ritz Club. [15] In 2014,Dhammika Perera planned to start a joint venture project with Australian gambling tycoon James Packer's Crown Casino of a value more than US$300 million,but the project was rejected by the newly elected United National Front Government. [16]
Importation of clinical waste
In July 2019,Perera and his company Hayleys were accused by MP Kanaka Herath of earning income through the illegal import of garbage from the United Kingdom. [17] [18] Hayleys has since denied any wrongdoing in the matter and highlighted the fact that the Group's logistics arm was merely providing logistics services including storage,value addition and re-exportation for its client Ceylon Metal Processing Corporation for a resource recovery operation. [19] Calling for a press conference on 22 July 2019,the managing director of Hayleys Advantis Limited,Ruwan Waidyaratne,categorically denied the allegations levelled against the company. Concerning 130 container loads of used mattresses that were stored at their Free Zone yard premises,the company clarified that the mattresses were imported by Ceylon Metal Processing Corporation (Pvt) Limited,the actual owner of the cargo. [20]
