Just over a month into retirement, Peter Kurz, aka “Mr. Taiwan” swapped the aura of star foreign soothsayer for the personal satisfaction and thrills of navigating mountain trails and renewed self-challenge.

Following three months of self reflection, the 61-year-old Kurz decided last November to bid farewell to the business world in Taiwan in which he had spent three decades. With that decision, he put in for retirement and stepped down from his position as managing director at Citigroup.

Kurz is a born and bred New Yorker who has made Taiwan his home for the past 30 years. Fluent in Mandarin, he is known among the foreign investment community as “Mister Taiwan”.

From the Taiwan Stock Exchange’s plunge to under 7000 points in 2008 to its climb beyond the 10,000 mark nearly a decade later, Kurz was the first foreign investment analyst to accurately forecast such major shifts. So accurate, in fact, were his prognostications that the Financial Supervisory Commission (Taiwan’s stock market regulatory body) asked him to meet in private “for a cup of coffee.”

What led to his decision to retire at this point? Kurz just laughs and says, “I used to wonder how anyone knew when to retire. But now I realize the answer is simply, you just know when it’s time!”

The decision to retire was expedited by both opportunity and a growing yearning over many years. Kurz finds himself on the cusp of taking on the challenges of entrepreneurship for the second time, seeking to take what he has gleaned from the past eight years of intense study of Taiwan’s biotech industry and contribute to society.

Kurz’s previous foray into entrepreneurship took place in 2000, when he founded Insight Pacific Investment Research after leaving Merrill Lynch. The venture was short-lived, however, and Kurz shut down operations after four years.

Thinking back on that period in his career, Kurz admits “that wasn’t such a great experience with entrepreneurship. In fact, it was quite difficult, and I always say that’s when my hair started turning gray. So I wasn’t keen to start another business.”

That is, until two years ago, when discussions with Bruce Berkman, CEO of Getchee Technology, while hiking, river tracing, and cycling, unexpectedly led to the idea of starting a healthcare-related information platform.

The combination of his exciting active outdoor lifestyle and entrepreneurial itch made Kurz feel increasingly restless. Rather than wasting both his and his company’s time, he decided to seize the chance to pursue his dreams.

No longer holding down a regular job, Kurz is busier and more efficient now in “retirement”. With the new venture still in the planning stages, he attends several meetings every day.

Weekends are just as busy, filled with competitions from triathlons, off-road running races, cycling, and marathons. (Read: Health is the Greatest Wealth: A Conversation with Peter Kurz)

Photo by Chien-Tong Wang

Major changes in the foreign investment environment helped push him towards entrepreneurship.

Industry Shifts Ignited Spark of Retirement

“The industry’s regulatory environment steadily changed over the past 10 years, but the direction of those reforms was not in our favor,” admits Kurz.

The latest example was the rollout of Europe’s Mifid II regulations governing financial instruments, which greatly limited the profitability of the analyst trade.

Early in 2018, in an article titled “The Unmourned Death of the Sellside Analyst”, the Financial Times of London described in vivid terms the plight of analysts pinched by the twin forces of Mifid II and machine trading technology.

Seeing the regulatory writing on the wall, as Kurz found that he would no longer be needed for many tasks going forward, he shifted his focus toward outdoor recreation. From running and swimming to cycling, he placed the desire for self-challenge on endurance events like triathlon and trail running.

Peng Yu-ying, director of elevator company GFC, met Kurz seven years ago through cycling. While quite a few people Kurz’s age work out and compete, “no one is as well-rounded as he is,” says Peng.

Whether swimming, biking, and running consecutively, or testing endurance speeding along steep mountain terrain on foot, Kurz is always up for challenging his limitations.

Last July the two cycled together from Puli in Nantou County to Tatajia, the summit of Alishan, before climbing Yushan the very next day. It was not his first ascent of Taiwan’s tallest peak, as the photo of him at the summit from 15 years ago attests. Other overt signs of his lifestyle include two bicycles and eight pairs of running shoes on his apartment balcony.

Peak Experiences in the Mountains

Three months later they both completed the Taiwan KOM Challenge, a cycling event that climbs over 3,000 vertical meters over 105 kilometers from sea level at Hualian’s Qixingtan to Wuling Pass on Huhuan Mountain.

Looking back on the best times of his life, Kurz hesitates for a moment before going on to describe running a marathon on Hehuan Mountain. Enhanced by the spectacular views along the route and the company of friends, it was an unforgettable experience. But Kurz’s deep love for the mountains can be traced back to his childhood.

“I’ve always wanted to find a job that would allow me to run around in the mountains,” says Kurz. An avid hiker in high school, he originally chose to major in geology at Dartmouth College.

But the nuts and bolts of geology did not hold the allure of the mountains, and Kurz shifted his academic focus to Chinese philosophy. This led him to Taiwan, and the lifelong bond he developed with the land and its people.

His parents now deceased and his son settled and working in Hong Kong, Kurz has chosen to spent his retirement in Taiwan with his wife. Apart from his circle of friends and factors like the healthcare system, one of the biggest attractions that continues to draw him to Taiwan is the stunning beauty of the mountains.

Now with some distance between him and the workplace, Kurz says that the older he gets, the happier he feels. “Maybe because I’m retired, but now I want to do more positive things for society,” he adds.

Now Kurz is not just running for health, beautiful scenery, or to challenge himself. Two years ago, he began working with the Big Future Foundation, taking one day a month to go running with youths without homes or friends, in turn helping them develop self-confidence and a new sense of accomplishment.

Now Kurz has come full circle in a sense. Unencumbered by the demands of work, he is motivated to give back to society, while spending more time in the mountains, living close to nature.

Sketch of Peter Kurz’s Life and Career

Act One
●       Born in New York
●       Studies Geology and Dartmouth College
●       Master’s in International Relations, Columbia University

Act Two
●       Regional manager, Barings Group Research Department
●       Taiwan Regional General Manager, Merrill Lynch Securities
●       2000 Founds Insight Pacific Investment Research
●       Chairman and Taiwan Research Director, Citibank Securities

Act Three
●       2018, retires
●       Active lifestyle spans cycling, off-road running and marathon running.
●       Founds new company

Quotes on Life’s Third Act

“The first thing you need to prepare for retirement is money, so you can basically break even month to month. The second is to develop interests, whether it’s sports or art. After retirement, the socializing you did when you were working need to be replaced by a new source, so you can keep making new friends.”

Translated by David Toman
Edited by Sharon Tseng