Robert Kuok: A Memoir


Book Description

Robert Kuok is one of the most highly respected businessmen in Asia. But this legendary Overseas Chinese entrepreneur, commodities trader who made his first milion on the London sugar market, hotelier of the Shangri-la chain, and property mogul has maintained a low profile and seldom shed light in public on his business empire or personal life. That is, until now. In these memoirs, the 94-year-old Kuok tells the remarkable story of how, starting in British Colonial Malaya, he built a multi-industry, multinational business group. In reflecting back on 75 years of conducting business, he offers management insights, discusses strategies and lessons learned, and relates his principles, philosophy, and moral code. Kuok has lived through fascinating and often tumultuous times in Asia – from British colonialism to Japanese military occupation to post-colonial Southeast Asia and the dramatic rise of Asian economies, including, more recently, China. From his front-row seat and as an active participant, this keen, multi-cultural observer tells nearly a century of Asian history through his life and times. Readers interested in business, management, history, politics, culture and sociology will all enjoy Robert Kuok’s unique and remarkable story.




Robert Kuok: A Memoir


Book Description

Robert Kuok is one of the most highly respected businessmen in Asia. But this legendary Overseas Chinese entrepreneur, commodities trader who made his first milion on the London sugar market, hotelier of the Shangri-la chain, and property mogul has maintained a low profile and seldom shed light in public on his business empire or personal life. That is, until now. In these memoirs, the 94-year-old Kuok tells the remarkable story of how, starting in British Colonial Malaya, he built a multi-industry, multinational business group. In reflecting back on 75 years of conducting business, he offers management insights, discusses strategies and lessons learned, and relates his principles, philosophy, and moral code. Kuok has lived through fascinating and often tumultuous times in Asia – from British colonialism to Japanese military occupation to post-colonial Southeast Asia and the dramatic rise of Asian economies, including, more recently, China. From his front-row seat and as an active participant, this keen, multi-cultural observer tells nearly a century of Asian history through his life and times. Readers interested in business, management, history, politics, culture and sociology will all enjoy Robert Kuok’s unique and remarkable story.




Liem Sioe Liong's Salim Group


Book Description

After Suharto gained power in Indonesia in the mid-1960s, he stayed as the country's president for more than three decades, helped by the powerful military, hefty foreign aid and support from a coterie of cronies. A pivotal business backer for his New Order government was Liem Sioe Liong, a migrant from China, who arrived in Java in 1938. A combination of the Suharto connection, serendipity and personal charm propelled him to become the wealthiest tycoon in Southeast Asia. This is the story of how Liem built the Salim Group, a conglomerate that in its heyday controlled Indonesia's largest non-state bank, the country's dominant cement producer and flour mill, as well as the world's biggest maker of instant noodles. The book features exclusive input from Liem, who died in 2012, and his youngest son, Anthony Salim. It traces the founder's life and the group's symbiosis with Suharto, his generals and family. After the tumultuous 1997-98 Asian financial crisis sparked Suharto's fall and a backlash against the strongman's cronies, Anthony staved off the crushing of the debt-laden group. Told in a journalistic style, the story of the Salim Group provides insights into Suharto's New Order. For business executives, students and anyone with an interest in Southeast Asia's largest economy, the volume makes a valuable contribution towards understanding the country's modern history.




The Sugar Casino


Book Description

SUGAR - a carbohydrate or toxic chemical; an excuse for obesity or the cause; much maligned or a natural ingredient? If nothing else, sugar triggers controversy, blame and myths on a global scale...and everyone seems to have an opinion, informed or otherwise. The Internet and the media are alight with articles citing added sugar as the leading cause of every disease and social ill from cancer to juvenile delinquency.How can this be true when per capita sugar consumption has been falling for the past forty years in most developed countries and has only increased slightly in the US? It is wrong to blame sugar for our ills; we need to find the real culprits.In this far-reaching and wide-ranging book Jonathan Kingsman, a 37-year sugar-industry veteran, dispels many myths, both about sugar and about how commodity markets work. He looks carefully at human rights, environment sustainability, speculation, food prices, commodity trading, market manipulation, government intervention and health. He provides some surprising conclusions.Anyone who is interested in how their food is produced and how it arrives on their plate, or into their cereal bowl will enjoy this book.With contributions from, or interviews with:* Isara Vongkusolkit, Chairman of Mitr Phol Sugar Group* Sunny Verghese, Co-Founder and CEO of Olam International Limited * Robert Kuok, Sugar King of Asia and international businessman * Chris Mahoney, Director of the Agricultural at Glencore International PLC * Greg Page, Executive Chairman of Cargill Inc.* Ralph Potter, Mentor to the sugar trade * Luc Tappy, Professor of Physiology at the University of Lausanne* Sven Sielhorst, Co-ordinator of the Sugarcane Programme at Solidaridad




Overseas Chinese Entrepreneurship and Capitalist Development in Southeast Asia


Book Description

The study aims at finding an explanation to the economic development of Southeast Asia. To achieve this end, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines have been chosen as the foci of the study. To explain the region's recent success, the study is guided by the hypothesis that overseas Chinese entrepreneurship, exercised by a group belonging to a discriminated ethnic minority, is an indispensable component of the capitalist development of Southeast Asia. Overseas Chinese businesses dominate nearly all branches of the economy of their respective countries of residence. On a regional scale, they are acknowledged to control two-thirds of the region's retail trade. The hypothesis of the study is validated by the empirical findings. Furthermore, the study has arrived at the conclusion that Southeast Asia is host to a type of entrepreneurship - Overseas Chinese entrepreneurship - that evolved and developed throughout the centuries and proven for its resiliency and risk-taking abilities. It did not create the boom in the region, however. Liberal government policies, the inflow of huge foreign capital, and the availability of cheap and skilled labor among the indigenous population are among the more crucial factors that facilitated this transformation.




World on Fire


Book Description

The reigning consensus holds that the combination of free markets and democracy would transform the third world and sweep away the ethnic hatred and religious zealotry associated with underdevelopment. In this revelatory investigation of the true impact of globalization, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua explains why many developing countries are in fact consumed by ethnic violence after adopting free market democracy. Chua shows how in non-Western countries around the globe, free markets have concentrated starkly disproportionate wealth in the hands of a resented ethnic minority. These “market-dominant minorities” – Chinese in Southeast Asia, Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, whites in Latin America and South Africa, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews in post-communist Russia – become objects of violent hatred. At the same time, democracy empowers the impoverished majority, unleashing ethnic demagoguery, confiscation, and sometimes genocidal revenge. She also argues that the United States has become the world’s most visible market-dominant minority, a fact that helps explain the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. Chua is a friend of globalization, but she urges us to find ways to spread its benefits and curb its most destructive aspects.




Asian Godfathers


Book Description

40 or 50 families control the economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. Their interests range from banking to property, from shipping to sugar, from vice to gambling. 13 of the 50 richest families in the world are in South East Asia yet they are largely unknown outside confined business circles. Often this is because they control the press and television as well as everything else. How do they do it? What are their secrets? And is it good news or bad for the places where they operate? Joe Studwell explosively lifts the lid on a world of staggering secrecy and shows that the little most people know is almost entirely wrong.




The Bamboo Network


Book Description

Following in the tradition of generations of expatriate Chinese merchants, they began establishing small family businesses. Today, the authors show, these have expanded into conglomerate business empires. Entrusting corporate divisions almost exclusively to relatives, and dealing extensively with fellow expatriates, these entrepreneurs have formed close-knit and formidable business spheres throughout Southeast Asia - a "bamboo network."




Student Activism in Malaysia


Book Description

This work traces the early rise and subsequent decline of politically effective student activism in Malaysia, shedding new light on the dynamics of mobilization and on the key role of students and universities in postcolonial political development.




Chinese Capitalism in Southeast Asia


Book Description

This collection examines the historically and geographically specific form of economic organization of the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and how it has adapted to the different historical and socio-political contexts of Southeast Asian countries. Moving beyond cultural explanations and traits to focus on the process of evolution and dynamism of situated practices, it argues that Chinese Capitalism is rapidly becoming a form of ‘hybrid capitalism’ and embodies the interdependent of culturally and institutionally specific dynamics at local and regional level, evolving and adapting to different institutional contexts and politico-economic conditions in the host Asian economies. This text also explores the social organization and political economy of the so-called overseas Chinese by examining the changing dynamism of Chinese capitalism in relation to forces of globalization. Focusing on key actors, primarily Chinese entrepreneurs in their business practices, and situated practices as well as cultural, political, social and economic factors under globalizing conditions, it provides providing a broad understanding without fixating or homogenizing Chinese capitalism, contributing to the understanding of the contexts that give rise to the emergence and transformation of Chinese Capitalism in Southeast Asia.