Pung Kheav Se

Pung was born in the early 1940s and is a Cambodian of Chinese Teochew descent. With the country taken over by the Khmer Rouge in 1975, Pung fled to neighbouring Thailand to seek refuge in a Thai refugee camp. After leaving the camp in 1980, Pung soon secured a job as a salesman and later became a goldsmith in Montreal, Canada where he would spend the next eleven years of his life until his return to Cambodia in the early 1990s.

Pung started his career as a goldsmith operating from a small kiosk in a grocery shop in Montreal, Canada's Chinatown. Later on, his business would continue to expand and include other services such as remittances and money transfer services as more and more Overseas Cambodians from Canada began to remit money back to Cambodia.^[2]

In 1991, Pung returned to Cambodia, where he began offering financial services and issuance of gold coins with the establishment of the Canadia Gold & Trust Corporation, a joint venture between Pung and the National Bank of Cambodia which would later become Canadia Bank. In the years that followed, Pung served as a longtime Chairperson of the Association of Banks of Cambodia and has since been renowned as Cambodia's banking pioneer and foremost financial magnate.^[2][3]

Since its inception and privatization in 1998, Canadia Bank has grown into one of the largest commercial banks in the Kingdom with total assets amounting to US$7.6 billion with a net profit of US$129 million as of 2021.^[1]

With a diversified business interest, Pung's venture into non-financial services and solutions led to the creation of one of Cambodia's largest investment and development companies with various property development projects such as Sorya Shopping Center, Cambodia's first ever mall, Canadia Tower, the Kingdom's first skyscraper, Koh Pich, Chroy Changvar Bay, the 2,600 hectare Techo International Airport, one of the world's largest airports by land size.^[4]

Since 2020, Pung's OCIC and its affiliates has invested an estimated US$5 billion in numerous public and social infrastructure projects throughout Cambodia with more projects in works such as Norea City, the Kong Sam Ol Overpass,^[5] the Russey Keo Bridge and Russey Keo Flyover, the Koh Norea Bridge^[6] and more to come.^[7]