Since its beginning at Sydney’s MLC Centre on the 36th floor, the Servcorp Corporation has grown exponentially. With only a single office attained at the start this spurred the purchase of another one, followed by the next, resulting in a total of 16 offices, which then grew to an occupancy of 25 offices, taking up half the floor of the entire level. Servcorp established itself as the first serviced office operation in a high rise building, in a central business district, in the world. Quite a feat for a little Aussie company destined to grow to a global entity.
Keeping the address of the MLC Centre for 31 years, the expansion continued with occupancy of offices across various levels including 36, 49, 59, 66, 67, 12, 56 and 57.
After the MLC Centre was well established, Servcorp set its sights on Melbourne’s City Mutual Building on the corner of Collins and Williams streets in Melbourne in the city’s CBD. The rent paid to the Landlord, on a per month basis, was a whopping twelve thousand dollars per month – today Servcorp pays three million dollars.
Servcorp was also the first business centre operation to go international. Following its opening in Brisbane and Perth it launched a business centre in Singapore. This represented the first Service Office Operator in Asia. Today there are over 1000 in this region alone and soon after Servcorp opened franchises in Bangkok, Malaysia and Indonesia.
In Indonesia in 1998 during the Asian Economic Crisis, riots broke out targeting the Christians. During this period an apartment where Servcorp’s team members were staying was burnt, the building was set on fire and Servcorp’s partner went broke, while two managers from Servcorp’s team were run out of town. One is currently the general manager of the whole of South East Asia.
Troubles did not end with Indonesia, Taine Moufarrige was running Sri Lanka. During his management term the Tamil Tigers bombed the Galadari Hotel and the World Trade Centre, a building in which Servcorp was a tenant. The damage wrote-off Servcorp’s serviced office operation and Sri Lanka was closed.
Marcus Moufarrige was sent to open Myanmar (Burma), the first serviced office operation in that country. Servcorp celebrated Aung San Suu Kyi’s election, but instead she was incarcerated and Servcorp closed its operations in Myanmar.
The last area of insurrection that created havoc and damaged a Servcorp business centre was in Thailand this year. Bullet holes in the external windows and the torching of the downstairs section of Central World, a building in which we are a tenant, is evidence of the unsettled world a global company like Servcorp operates in.
The team does not give up – we are re-opening in Indonesia and look forward to operating in Jakarta again. Sri Lanka is not totally off the agenda, and we have reinstated and expanded our operation in Bangkok, achieving high occupancy rates again. During the riots in Thailand, Servcorp demonstrated its strength by diverting all Thai telephone calls along its own private network to Singapore, and flew a receptionist there to answer all client calls in Thai.
No doubt the future will bring further civil unrest and challenges, however this will not deter Servcorp, as its people in every country we operate in, are supportive, dedicated and form a valuable part of the Servcorp multi-cultural team.
