Mellower side of AirAsia’s gregarious chief

Special brand: Fernandes is cheeky rather than cocky, charming rather than condescending.

WHEN AirAsia Group chief executive Tony Fernandes was 15 and at boarding school in Britain, he got a phone call from his father in Kuala Lumpur telling him that his mother was very, very ill.

“But my father was a negative, pessimistic kind of guy, so I didn’t take it too seriously,” he says.