power of love - Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants

Valentine’s Day
With the couple working in different industries,
Chew and Ho never bring work
matters home. “I deal with lawyers but I also
deal with a different set of professionals,
mainly investment bankers, corporate bankers,
analysts and fund managers so that side
is very different from the professional firm
side,” says Chew, who is also a former vicepresident
of the Institute.
“I wouldn’t know about his line of business
and I don’t want to pry into that either
because we deal with sensitive issues at
work, and unless it’s a general issue we never
talk about work,” says Ho.
Being married to another accountant
means an understanding that sometimes
work has to come first.
“We know what the job entails, and it
makes it easier for us to understand why we
40 February 2013
don’t come home at a certain time or why we
have to change our holidays to fit our work
schedule,” says Ho.
Her husband agrees. “If I say I’ve got
my year-end result or I’ve got my annual
reports, that’s something we both understand,”
says Chew.
But like any couple, sometimes bumping
heads is inevitable. “He is a financial news
junkie... It was a Sunday, I tried to cuddle up
to him and he said: ‘Don’t come between me
and my Financial Times’,” laughs Ho.
Like other career-driven couples working
in Hong Kong, Chew and Ho have grown
accustomed to the limited face-to-face time
they have Mondays to Fridays.
Weekends, however, are usually reserved
for the family. “We’ve established
such an easy and comfortable rhythm over
the years. We talk during the day, whether
for checking things on the home front, or
maybe it’s just asking him, ‘What time are
you coming to pick me up after work?’ ”
Competing camps
On top of long working hours, Eddy and Nellie
Fong had to deal with another thing keeping
them apart: professional rivalry.
“Working in competitive firms when you
are young is easy but working in competitive
firms when you are both partners is difficult,”
recalls Eddy Fong, chairman of the
Open University of Hong Kong, former chairman
of the Securities and Futures Commission
and a retired PricewaterhouseCoopers
partner. His wife, before retirement, was a
partner at Arthur Andersen, one of the then
Big Five accounting firms.
Chew Fook-aun and Sabrina Ho