Simple values count for Bob Miller - the tycoon behind the DFS empire

The man behind the DFS duty free empire is 80 today. In a rare interview, Bob Miller looks back on his life and reveals his hopes for the city

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A statue of Superman graces the front door of entrepreneur Bob Miller's office at the Cheung Kong Center in Central. "It lightens the mood a bit," says Miller. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Published: 12:00am, 23 May 2013Updated: 9:49am, 23 May 2013

A wise man once said of the game of poker: "When the man with money meets the man with experience, the man with experience leaves with the money and the man with the money leaves with experience." Robert Warren Miller likes the odd hand, and as he celebrates his 80th birthday in Hong Kong today he might well reflect that if business was a game of poker, he has walked away with both.

The man who set up Duty Free Shoppers in 1960s Hong Kong and Honolulu to cash in on the spending power of the US military, buttressed that success by tapping into the fledgling Japanese airport tourist market and then, most recently, by expanding outside the departure lounge with his Galleria business, freely admits he has played his cards close to his chest throughout his career.

That modus operandi continues today as DFS - the acronym into which Duty Free Shoppers morphed - moves to corner a new wave of shoppers: the mainland's travel-hungry and free-spending middle class.

Even when he came close to throwing in his hand when his relationship with long-time partner and friend Charles "Chuck" Feeney - the pairing at the very core of Duty Free Shoppers - came to an acrimonious end just over a decade ago, Bob Miller only consulted those in his inner circle before deciding he couldn't walk away from a lifelong commitment. That was in 1996, when Feeney opted to sell his share in the business to LVMH.