Go East, Young Man

In Hong Kong's Cafe de Chine, 500 guests sat down to a lavish celebration that included a 14-course dinner, scenes from Peking operas, Soochow poetry recitations, drinking and dancing. The host was Insurance Tycoon Cornelius Vander Starr, 67, and the occasion was the 40th anniversary of his insurance company, the largest independent international insurance agency in the world, with branches from Paris to Phnom Penh. Starr, who started his business in the Far East, could well afford the celebration. Last week his American International Insurance Corp. reported that in 1959 it collected $155 million in life and general (fire, casualty, and marine) insurance premiums, has more than $1 billion in force. From his insurance fortune, Starr can also afford to be a sportsman, patron of the arts and philanthropist. He spent more than $2,000,000 transforming Stowe, Vt. into the Magic Mountain of New England skiing, underwrote the cost of the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Mad ame Butterfly (TIME, March 3, 1958), and has helped further international relations by annually providing scholarships in U.S. schools for some 20 foreign col lege students.

Goodbye Shanghai. Born in Fort Bragg, Calif., Starr left the University of California before graduation, was admitted to the bar after reading law with a San Francisco attorney. He ran an insurance agency for two years, sold it for $10,000 when he enlisted in the Army during World War I. At war's end he went to Shanghai, took over the tiny insurance department of a Shanghai bank, converted it into an independent firm --American Asiatic Underwriters -- and be came agent for a dozen U.S. insurance companies, including Fireman's Fund, Continental and Great American. He violated the custom of the European colony by giving responsible jobs to Chinese, thus opened up the Chinese community to his salesmen. His Asian pool expanded so rapidly that in 1926 Starr returned to New York and created the American International Underwriters Corp. to centralize reporting for his Shanghai companies and to develop insurance in the U.S. on risks abroad. Starr's hard drive for busi ness did not endear him to more genteel competitors. They called him a buccaneer as he snatched their business away, often by offering higher commissions to agents, and larger rebates to those insured if they filed no claims.

In 1926 Starr bought a small Shanghai newspaper, built it into the Shanghai Eve ning Post & Mercury, one of the most outspoken papers in the Far East. Starr's paper opposed Japan's growing sphere of influence so vehemently that he was forced to leave Shanghai. Then the Japa nese took over the city. But American International found new fields to conquer in Latin America, eventually built a larger business there than it ever had in the Orient.

Hello, Hong Kong. Starr went back to Shanghai after World War II, found his organization intact. When the Chinese Communists threatened the city in 1949. Starr hired three airplanes and shuttled more than 100 employees and their families to offices in Hong Kong.

These days, Latin America accounts for 40% of Starr's business, the Far East 30%, and the rest of the world the remainder. His organization has invested heavily to help beef up the economy of the countries where it does business. Starr's fast-growing Philippine American Life subsidiary has built middle-income housing in the islands, has also financed modern factory sites. His latest project: Philippine American is constructing model agricultural units to teach Filipino farmers better ways to boost crop yields.

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