It was the year 1949 in Singapore at a British army auction. And they were auctioning paint. Spoiled during years of war storage, it was just sitting in barrels.

Why would anyone buy spoiled paint nobody could use? I'm sure you'd think the same.

But Goh Cheng Liang saw something different. He scraped together what little money he had and bought the barrels for cheap.

Today, walk into any hardware store across Asia, and you'll see what came from that gamble.

Nippon Paint is the world's fourth-largest paint manufacturer by revenue. At the same time, it tops the ranks for market share in decorative paints in five Asian countries and Turkey.

The Goh family, through Wuthelam Holdings, controls nearly 60% of the Tokyo-listed giant.

And what happened to Goh Cheng Liang?

When founder and patriarch Goh Cheng Liang passed away peacefully on August 12, 2025, at age 98, he left behind a $13B fortune—making him Singapore's richest person at the time of his death.

And it all started with paint nobody wanted. This is the story of Goh Cheng Liang.

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🏚️ Humble beginnings

Goh Cheng Liang was born in 1927 to Wu Songchang and Li Xiuying. His father was jobless at the time, and his mother washed laundry for a living.

Their family of seven squeezed into a $3-a-month rented room in a River Valley Road shophouse. The cramped conditions lasted until he was 12.

He had no formal education because he had no money for school. Every day was just about survival.

When World War II broke out, his parents sent him away to Muar in Johor, where he helped his brother-in-law sell fishing nets.

He returned to Singapore in 1943 and tried starting his own business selling aerated water. It failed completely.

For the next four and a half years, he worked at a hardware store.

He learned what he could about materials, chemicals, the rhythm of buying and selling. The hardware store became his classroom.

Every lesson came from watching, listening, and trying new things.

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🎲 The gamble nobody understood

In 1949, the British army was auctioning off war surplus materials. Among the lots were barrels of paint that had gone bad during years of tropical wartime storage.

These stocks were badly degraded, often with the pigments and binders separating, forming lumpy textures, and showing signs of chemical breakdown. By conventional standards, this paint was totally unsellable.

Goh scraped together what little money he had and bought several barrels for cheap. It seemed like a foolish gamble.

What could anyone possibly do with spoiled paint?

As Goh would later find out, you could do a lot.

While he didn't have any formal training, he had his experience from the hardware store and a Chinese dictionary on chemicals.

At the end of the day, he thought he didn't have anything to lose. So, he just tried.

He started experimenting in 1949, mixing colors by hand and adding solvents to test formulas.

He did it over and over until he created something sellable. He launched his brand called Pigeon.

The launch wasn't anything grand. To be honest, Goh just had paint that worked and cost less than imports.

But he believed Singapore needed affordable, locally-made paint. And as he said, he had nothing to lose anyway.

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📈 Timing changes everything

Then in 1950, the Korean War started.

Singapore's government slammed import restrictions to preserve foreign reserves. Overnight, foreign paint brands disappeared from shelves and demand for local products exploded.

Pigeon's sales boomed and orders poured in faster than Goh could fulfill them. From a small operation, Pigeon now became essential.

The timing was pure luck.

But thankfully, Goh had been ready with his own paint brand when it hit.

The gamble on rotten paint paid off beyond anything he could've imagined.

He was also smart enough to know luck wouldn't last forever. When the war ended and restrictions lifted, he knew foreign brands would return.

They had bigger budgets, better technology, and established reputations.

To survive and grow, he needed real expertise.

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🇩🇰 Going to learn

So, Goh made a decision that would define everything that came next.

Sometime in the early 1950s, he travelled to Denmark to study paint manufacturing technology.

It was the 1950s.

He was a man with no formal education, no engineering background, and he didn't even speak Danish.

Still, he took what little money he'd made from Pigeon and bet it on a trip halfway around the world just to learn more.

He knew that luck had saved him once with the Korean War, but that it probably wouldn't save him twice. So he went and learned.

When he returned to Singapore in the mid-1950s, he wasn't just a lucky businessman who'd bought spoiled paint and knew how to work with it. He understood it all much deeper.

And in 1955, he opened his first proper paint shop in Singapore. It was a small shop, but it represented much more for him and Pigeon: legitimacy and ambition beyond just survival.

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✅ The partnership that changed everything

Word of Goh's growing business reached Japan.

Nippon Paint, founded in 1881 and already a major player in Asia, needed local partners who understood Southeast Asian markets.

Goh became Nippon Paint's main distributor in Singapore in 1962. They formalized a partnership, creating a joint venture called Nipsea—Nippon Paint Southeast Asia Group.

Nippon Paint brought global expertise, brand recognition, and advanced manufacturing technology. Goh and Pigeon brought deep local knowledge and distribution networks he'd built with Pigeon.

Neither knew it then, but this partnership would last decades, growing into something larger than each side imagined.

By 1965, they'd built their first manufacturing plant in Singapore.

This wasn't just Goh's shop anymore. It was an industrial operation that could supply the entire region.

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🏢 Building the empire

In 1974, Goh founded Wuthelam Holdings. It started as a real estate concern, and a vehicle to diversify beyond just paint.

Goh invested strategically in property development, creating landmarks that shaped Singapore's landscape. He developed Liang Court shopping mall at Clarke Quay and Mount Elizabeth Hospital. Both required significant capital and risk.

While Goh later sold these properties, they became part of Singapore's infrastructure.

Mount Elizabeth evolved into a premier medical tourism destination serving patients from across Southeast Asia, and Liang Court became a landmark shopping complex.

Goh understood that Singapore's rapid development in the 1970s-80s created opportunities beyond paint.

He bought into practically everything. Electronics. Logistics. Mining in China. Golf courses, marinas, specialty packaging. If it made money in Asia, Goh probably owned a piece of it.

The man who started with rotten paint was suddenly everywhere.

But paint stayed as his goldmine.

Why? Singapore had this rule: building exteriors needed repainting every five to seven years. For condos and commercial buildings, skip it and face up to S$3,000 in fines.

Singapore was exploding in the 70s and 80s.

New HDB blocks going up monthly. Office towers sprouting in the central business district. Hotels, shopping centers, condos. Everything needed paint.

Then five to seven years later? They'd need it again. And again.

It was like owning a toll booth on the only road in town.

While other businesses fought for customers new and old, Goh's customers had no choice. The government literally required them to buy paint.

Goh's business grew in stride with a nation that grew and developed. And throughout the years, paint stayed as the core that funded everything else.

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🔒 Staying private

By the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Singapore's stock exchange was booming and many family businesses were going public. Goh refused to follow the trend.

Goh reportedly shared, "My personal philosophy is I never want to go public. First, I'm not a professional manager. Second, these professional managers who come and join me, I don't know how to handle them, I don't know how to drive them."

He trusted his instincts more than quarterly earnings calls and shareholder demands.

Staying private meant slower growth. But it also meant complete control over strategy, timing, values. He could make long-term bets without pressure to show immediate returns.

Goh built steadily by reinvesting profits and maintaining quality. His aversion to going public kept the business family-controlled and focused on sustainable growth rather than short-term metrics.

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👨‍👦 The next generation takes over

By the 1980s, Goh's eldest son Goh Hup Jin had joined the business. Hup Jin, born in 1953, had grown up watching his father build an empire from rotten paint barrels.

Hup Jin took over daily operations.

His father remained involved in major decisions. The transition was gradual, allowing Hup Jin to learn while maintaining continuity. Both men were known for being extremely discreet about their wealth.

But Hup Jin had ambitions beyond just running the existing business. He wanted full control of Nippon Paint, the Japanese company, itself.

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💰 The seven-year pursuit

In January 2013, Hup Jin made his move, which was an unsolicited takeover bid for Nippon Paint.

Think about the audacity. Trying to acquire the Japanese giant that had been their partner for 50 years. Yes, the company his father had once distributed for.

It was a major role reversal: the distributor becoming the owner.

The bid failed, and two months later, Hup Jin withdrew it.

Amazingly, the failed attempt didn't shatter the relationship. Instead, it opened negotiations. In February 2014, they agreed to a strategic alliance that increased Wuthelam's stake from 15% to 39%.

Not full control, but it was progress.

Hup Jin became chairman of Nippon Paint in March 2018. Positioning himself for what would come next.

Meanwhile, Nippon Paint was on a shopping spree, acquiring Australia's DuluxGroup for A$3.8 billion ($2.7B USD) and Turkey's Betek Boya for $247M in 2019.

The global paint industry was consolidating. Everyone was buying everyone.

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🤝🏼 The $12B reunion

And finally, in August 2020, Nippon Paint and Wuthelam Holdings announced a historic deal. It was 1.29T JPY (about $12.2B) and one of the biggest transactions in Asia that year.

Wuthelam would buy 1.185T yen worth of new shares in Nippon Paint, taking its stake from 39% to just under 60% (eventually 58.7% when the deal closed in January 2021).

Nippon Paint would use the capital—plus 100 billion yen in cash—to buy out their joint ventures across China, India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand. They'd also take over Wuthelam's wholly-owned Indonesian business for about $2B.

The deal simplified a complex corporate structure that had lasted nearly 60 years.

Rather than managing separate joint ventures across Asia, everything would now be unified under Nippon Paint with the Goh family as majority shareholders.

According to Forbes, Goh Cheng Liang's net worth jumped from $16B to $24B almost overnight.

The partnership that began in 1962 had come full circle.

The distributor had become the owner, and the boy who'd bought rotten paint for cheap now controlled the largest paint company in Asia.

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🎨 The final chapter

Goh Cheng Liang continued living quietly despite his massive wealth.

But his greatest passion in later years was philanthropy.

In 1995, with support from the late President Wee Kim Wee, he established the Goh Foundation. The foundation made substantial donations to medical research, particularly in cancer treatment.

As a cancer survivor himself, Goh funded the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS) and the Goh Cheng Liang Proton Therapy Centre.

The foundation also awarded grants supporting children's cancer research at KK Women's and Children's Hospital, the Viva Foundation, and the National University Hospital. He backed research into rheumatological and immunological conditions through the ARiSE programme at Singapore General Hospital.

Beyond Singapore, he funded roads, clean water supplies, sanitation systems, and several schools in Dawu Village, his ancestral home in Chaozhou, China.

Goh Cheng Liang passed away peacefully on August 12, 2025, at 98, with his family by his side.

According to multiple news reports, at the time of his death, he was Singapore's richest person, with an estimated net worth of $13B.

He was survived by three children—Hup Jin, Chuen Jin, and Chiat Jin—along with eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

And even after death, he shocked people with his moves. From buying rotten paint to his company buying a majority stake in Nippon Paint to his final will.

According to Bloomberg reporting in September 2025, six of his eight grandchildren each received stakes worth over $1B in Nippon Paint Holdings—a staggering $6B inheritance that skipped a generation.

It went straight to the grandchildren.

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💪🏼 What remains

Walk into any hardware store across Asia today. See that Nippon Paint? It's in over 45 countries now. Number one in five Asian markets and Turkey.

It all started with paint nobody wanted. In 1949, people at that British army auction walked past those rotten barrels.

Everyone except Goh Cheng Liang.

Seventy-six years later, his gamble is still paying off. The paint is everywhere. The partnership lasted 60 years. The lessons are eternal.

The boy who bought rotten paint died Singapore's richest person. What started as rotten paint turned into a $13B legacy.

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Takeaway Scoop

Lessons founders and builders can learn from Nippon Paint and Goh Cheng Liang’s story.

• Start with what others overlook. The British army was selling spoiled paint. Goh bought it, worked with it, and it led to a $13B empire. The best opportunities hide in plain sight, in the broken, discarded, and "worthless." That's where competition is lowest and potential highest. Look for problems others consider too small, too messy, or not worth the effort.
• Timing matters, but preparation matters more. The Korean War gave Goh his break when import restrictions created sudden demand for local paint. But he'd already done the work: learning chemicals in the hardware store, buying the paint barrels, experimenting with formulas, and launching Pigeon. Luck favors those who've built the foundation to capitalize on it. You can't predict when your break will come, but you can be ready when it does.
• Invest in practical learning, especially without credentials. Goh never attended school, but he traveled to Denmark to learn paint manufacturing and studied chemistry with a Chinese dictionary. Formal education helps, but resourcefulness and hunger to learn matter more. Go where the knowledge is. Learn by doing, watching, and asking questions.
• Build partnerships that last decades, not quarters. The Nippon Paint partnership thrived for 60 years (1962-2020) because both sides brought irreplaceable value. Nippon Paint got Southeast Asia. Goh got technology. Both got rich. The best deals aren't win-lose. They're win-win for 60 years. You don’t always have to be negotiating for dominance.
• Understand regulations as opportunities, not obstacles. Singapore's mandatory repainting rule wasn't a burden. It was a goldmine. Every regulation creates a market. Every compliance requirement creates demand. While others complain about rules, Goh saw a toll booth on the only road in town. Look for the business model hiding inside the rulebook.
• Stay private if it protects your vision. When everyone was going public in the 1980s, Goh stayed private. "I'm not a professional manager. I don't know how to handle them," he said. Staying private meant slower growth but complete control. Not every business needs to go public. Sometimes staying small, private, and controlled is the smarter path.
• Play the long game with patience. Goh tried to buy his partner and failed but made the deal happen 7 years later. Not 7 months, 7 years. From buying rotten paint in 1949 to the $12B merger in 2020 was 71 years of building. In an era of wishing for quick flips and exits, sometimes the biggest wins come from playing a completely different game. Be willing to build slowly if it means building something massive.
• Be suspicious of consensus. When others avoided "rotten" paint, Goh bought it. When everyone went public, he stayed private. When typically most distributors stayed small, he bought the supplier. Don’t let them limit what you think is possible.

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