Dhammika Perera

Kulappu Arachchige Don Dhammika Perera, commonly known as Dhammika Perera (born December 28, 1967), is a Sri Lankan billionaire businessman and politician.

A top corporate raider, he is one of the wealthiest people in Sri Lanka, controlling 23 listed companies on the Colombo Stocke Exchange.

Perera owns a controlling stake in the conglomerates Hayleys and Vallibel One, a company he founded.

Through Hayleys, Perera controls Amaya Leisure, The Kingsbury and Singer (Sri Lanka) while Royal Ceramics, LB Finance, and Lanka Tiles are controlled by Vallibel One.

Dhammika Perera was born in 1967 in Payagala in the Kalutara District.

His father was a grocery businessman and his mother was a schoolteacher.

He had two brothers and a sister.

He completed his primary and secondary education at the Taxila Central College, Horana and started on the NDT program at the Institute of Technology, University of Moratuwa.

Dropping out, he began a business venture in 1986 at the age of 19.

As a teenager, Dhammika Perera started putting money into a street hawker who ran a business in front of his uncle's café.

He then rented slot machines, installing them in his uncle's café.

In 1987, dropping out of the NDT program, Perera went to Taiwan for three months of technical training.

On his return to Sri Lanka, he started a machine manufacturing business making slot machines close to his residence in Payagala and continued until 1991, when President Ranasinghe Premadasa imposed a ban on jackpot/slot machines.

Following the ban he moved into car sales in Paiyagala, before moving into the gambling business by starting his first casino in 1993, which is now owned and managed by his two brothers.

He also ran Tito Electronics, an electronic shop repairing electronic circuit boards in Colpetty.

He started a business producing and selling neon bulbs in 1995, at a time when none of the manufacturers was keen on selling those bulbs.

In 1999, his business career took a new direction after he met Nadeem ul Haque, then senior resident representative of the International Monetary Fund in Sri Lanka, who became his mentor.

Ul Haque organized a seminar for him on infrastructure and business development at KfW in Germany, where he learnt the use of mathematical modelling in business acquisitions and aspects of risk and cash-flow management.

With Ul Haque he drew up a 20-year plan, targeting 12 sectors.

He acquired a majority stake in Pan Asia Bank in 2000, at a time when the bank was regarded as a loss-making financial institution.

In 2002, Dhammika Perera, through his Vallibel Holdings, bought controlling stakes in four companies in the stock market, having made short-term transactions during the bull run.

In 2003, his holding company Vallibel Holdings tookover LB Finance.

In 2003, he took over Royal Ceramics having become the major shareholder and buying out minority shareholders.

That year he gained a 56.07% stake of Ruhunu Hotels and Travels Limited which owned Club Horizon Hotel, Koggala which was later renamed as The Fortress Resort & Spa.

He acquired the family-owned The Rupee Finance Company Limited in 2005, which was later rebranded as Vallibel Finance and took it to an initial public offering in 2010.

Perera has been closely linked to the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, having served as chairman of the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka from 2007 to 2010 and Transport Secretary from 2011 to 2015.

He was appointed a Member of Parliament in the National List in June 2022, succeeding Basil Rajapaksa from the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, briefly serving President Gotabaya Rajapaksa as his Minister of Investment Promotion from June to July 2022.

In 2008, Perera acquired a controlling stake in Hayleys PLC, the Sri Lankan conglomerate founded in 1878.

In 2010, Perera's Vallibel One took over the Delmege Group, which had been founded in 1850.

By 2013, Dhammika Perera and Nimal Perera had taken over majority control over Hayleys, becoming its co-chairman.

With Hayleys, Perera gained control over several subsidiaries owned by Hayleys, including Amaya Leisure, Haycarb, Hayleys Fabric PLC, The Kingsbury and Dipped Products.

In 2013, Vallibel One-owned Royal Ceramics took over Lanka Ceramics PLC, and with it came Swisstek.

In 2013, Perera became Sri Lanka's wealthiest individual, with a net worth estimated by Forbes Asia at 72.6 billion LKR (approx. 550 million US dollars).

He has been the executive director of Vallibel Finance since 2014.

In 2014, Dhammika Perera planned to start a joint venture project with Australian gambling tycoon James Packer's Crown Casino of a value more than US$300 million, but the project was rejected by the newly elected United National Front Government.

He met investor Nimal Perera after acquiring the Pan Asia Bank stake, who become his close business partner until the duo parted ways in 2017.

Perera became the chairman of Lanka Tiles in 2017 and was appointed as the co-chairman of Singer (Sri Lanka) in October 2017 after Hayleys agreed to buy Singer.

He was also appointed as chairman of Board of Directors of Lanka Walltiles in 2017.

Perera continued to own three of the five casinos in Colombo, namely Bally's Colombo, Bellagio Colombo and The Ritz Club.

Perera was appointed as the chairman of Director Board of Lanka Ceramic PLC in 2017, but he resigned from the position on 31 August 2018.