FAB 50 BIG COMPANIES đ RICHEST FILIPINOS ƫĂĀāĈƫđƫċċ IVY LEAGUE ‘INCUBATORS’ BRIAN ONG AND OTHER COUNSELORS TAP THEIR UNDERGRAD EXPERIENCE TO SHAPE CHINESE APPLICANTS Plus: TOP U.S. COLLEGES RANKED A SCHOOL FOR QUANTS AUSTRALIA...............A $12.00 CHINA....................RMB 85.00 HONG KONG................HK $80 INDIA............................RS 375 INDONESIA............RP 77,000 JAPAN.................¥1238 + TAX KOREA........................W 9,500 MALAYSIA...............RM 24.00 NEW ZEALAND.......NZ $13.00 PAKISTAN....................RS 600 PHILIPPINES..................P 260 SINGAPORE..............S $12.50 TAIWAN......................NT $275 THAILAND......................B 260 UNITED STATES........US $10.00 CONTENTS — SEPTEMBER 2017 S PAGE 26 “THERE WAS EXCITEMENT BECAUSE I WAS BUILDING SOMETHING NEW.” —SANJIV BAJAJ, head of India’s Fab 50 List member Bajaj Finserv VOLUME 13 NUMBER 8 10 | FACT & COMMENT // STEVE FORBES Why GOP-care lost the U.S. public. THE FAB 50 22 | INTRODUCTION Our list of Asia-Pacific’s best, big publicly traded companies has 29 entries from China. BY JOHN KOPPISCH 23 | THE PICTURE OF HEALTH Yunnan Baiyao has built a major pharma company by combining old and new medicine. BY MICHAEL SCHUMAN AND JANE HO 26 | GETTING CREDIT Sanjiv Bajaj is turning Bajaj Finserv into an Indian consumer’s best friend. BY ANURADHA RAGHUNATHAN 32 | A NEW LEASE ON LIFE SK Hynix was in trouble for years but has turned things around dramatically. BY DONALD KIRK 33 | MISSING India’s IT companies have been a mainstay on our Fab 50 lists—until this year. BY ANURADHA RAGHUNATHAN 34 | THE WORLD OF ALIBABA Jack Ma’s online giant is on an acquisition binge. BY JANE HO 36 | NEW TO THE CLASS A look at some notable newcomers. Plus: names that may soon appear on the Fab 50. COMPANIES, PEOPLE 12 | TAIWAN FLIES SOUTH The reiteration of a policy push toward emerging Asia as China ties fray. BY RALPH JENNINGS COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY JASPER JAMES FOR FORBES 2 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED, ALL TOTALS AND PRICES EXPRESSED IN OUR STORIES ARE IN U.S. DOLLARS. CONTENTS — SEPTEMBER 2017 VOLUME 13 NUMBER 8 15 | GADGETMAN // BEN SIN A look at Game Pad Digital’s Pocket laptop. 16 | CHINA TRAVEL: MORE OUT THAN IN A graphic look at the mainland’s tourism deficit. BY JINSHAN HONG 17 | ASIA SPOTLIGHT // JEAN-PIERRE LEHMANN Reflections on the rise of the East and the fall of the West. 18 | CHINA’S PRIVATE OIL FORCE A chat with Sit Kwong Lam, founder of China’s Brightoil. BY SHU-CHING JEAN CHEN 20 | DELL’S NEW DESTINY Michael Dell on artificial intelligence and managing creativity. BY RICH KARLGAARD 21 | LUXURY LINEAGE: JIMMY CHOO From modest London shoemaker to diversified global brand. BY MICHAEL SOLOMON S PAGE 68 “SNOB APPEAL— THAT’S MY BUSINESS.” —ROBERTO ONGPIN, NO. 16 on our list of the Philippines’ 50 Richest 49 | RICHEST AUTHORS J.K. Rowling is baa-ack! BY HALEY CUCCINELLO, NATALIE ROBEHMED AND MICHELA TINDERA TECHNOLOGY 50 | EYES ON THE ROAD How Velodyne’s vision sensors are ushering in the self-driving-car revolution. BY ALAN OHNSMAN BACK TO SCHOOL T PAGE 65 “THE ROLE OF MACHINES IN THE FUTURE WILL BE FAR MORE SIGNIFICANT.” —NARIMAN FARVARDIN, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology 59 | AMERICA’S TOP COLLEGES How tiny Harvey Mudd College is besting Stanford and Carnegie Mellon in the recruiting race. Plus: best-value colleges and other rankings. BY CAROLINE HOWARD 62 | CRITICAL THINKING Brian Ong is helping to change how Chinese kids get into U.S. colleges. BY REBECCA FENG 65 | SCHOOL OF QUANT A small college in New Jersey has become a training ground for Wall Street engineers. BY MATT SCHIFRIN THE PHILIPPINES’ 50 RICHEST 68 | LAPS OF LUXURY The Ongpin saga is culminating in a rollout of regal residences for the regional elite. BY JANE A. PETERSON 74 | THE LIST Henry Sy’s net worth has ballooned to $18 billion, up from $13.7 billion in 2016. BY GRACE CHUNG FORBES LIFE 84 | ELECTRIC AVENUE Three Chinese companies are taking over Formula E racing. BY PAMELA AMBLER 86 | SOCIAL SECURITY Sumptuous villas in Chiang Mai include the ultimate in home bunker arrangements. BY JIM DOBSON 88 | THOUGHTS On inventions. 4 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 HEAD OFFICE ICTSI Administration Bldg., Manila International Container Terminal MICT South Access Road, Port of Manila, Manila 1012, Philippines +632 245 4101 +632 245 2245 info@ictsi.com www.ictsi.com ARGENTINA • AUSTRALI A • BRAZIL • CHINA • COLOMBIA • CROATIA • D.R. CONGO • ECUADOR • GEORGIA • HONDURAS • INDONESIA • IRAQ • MADAGASCAR • MEXICO • PAKISTAN • PHILIPPINES • POLAND FORBES ASIA SIDELINES Editor Tim W. Ferguson Editorial Director Karl Shmavonian Art Director Charles Brucaliere Senior Editor John Koppisch Wealth Lists Editors Luisa Kroll, Kerry A. Dolan Photo Editor Michele Hadlow Statistics Editor Andrea Murphy Research Director Sue Radlauer Online Editor Jasmine Smith Reporter Grace Chung Intern Rebecca Feng Editorial Bureaus Beijing Yue Wang Shanghai Russell Flannery (Senior Ed.); Maggie Chen India Editor Naazneen Karmali Contributing Editors Bangkok Suzanne Nam Chennai Anuradha Raghunathan Hong Kong Shu-Ching Jean Chen Jakarta Justin Doebele Melbourne Lucinda Schmidt Perth Tim Treadgold Singapore Jane A. Peterson Taipei Joyce Huang Vietnam Lan Anh Nguyen Columnists Jean-Pierre Lehmann, Ben Sin Production Manager Michelle Ciulla EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Steve Forbes CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER Lewis D’Vorkin FORBES MAGAZINE EDITOR Randall Lane EXECUTIVE EDITOR Michael Noer ART & DESIGN DIRECTOR Robert Mansfield FORBES DIGITAL VP, INVESTING EDITOR Matt Schifrin VP, DIGITAL CONTENT STRATEGY Coates Bateman VP, PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT Salah Zalatimo VP, WOMEN’S DIGITAL NETWORK Christina Vuleta ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITORS Frederick E. Allen – Leadership Loren Feldman – Entrepreneurs Janet Novack WASHINGTON Michael K. Ozanian SPORTSMONEY Frightful Footnote W hen asked over the years to summarize prospects for the Asian region, I usually concluded with words to this effect: “All this assumes no calamity stemming from North Korea.” The DPRK, as it calls itself, has been the outlier in discussions of Asia-Pacific. Even as Longer view: Kim’s missile play could reshape Korea. other formerly isolated regimes such as Burma/Myanmar rejoined the formal economy, Pyongyang’s rulers remained apart. Of course, they maintained their underground and often illicit trade to keep their own plates full, and in recent years have countenanced growing commerce with bordering areas of China, but basically North Korean GDP has been a null set. This in a country that, through the early 1960s, at least had a Stalinist presence in world output. All the while, the military buildup and bluster there continued. Now, it is nuclear and center stage. No longer can the DPRK be relegated to a footnote in Asian punditry. A diplomatic crisis could lead to untold death and destruction. As most South Koreans came to adopt a shrug toward this existential peril, so, too, must the wider business world, lest the everyday pursuit of life (and profit) be sidetracked. Yet, it’s ever more necessary to hedge stark outcomes. One way or another, it’s less likely now that the ruling dynasty will continue for the life span of the current North Korean tyrant, Kim Jong Un. Whether by conflagration or coercion, a “regime change” would open the door to suzerainty over the north, logically by China, and eventual reunification of the Korean peninsula in a kind of political neutralization. As free-spirited investors like Jim Rogers in Singapore have been saying, this could be the world’s biggest swing play—from ruin to riches as the Korean north (again—we dearly hope with no war) is able to bring its complementary resources into union with the prosperous south. This would rock the region and move the global needle. For now, it’s surely more of an opening sentence than a closing one. DEPARTMENT HEADS Mark Decker, John Dobosz, Clay Thurmond FOUNDED IN 1917 B.C. Forbes, Editor-in-Chief (1917-54) Malcolm S. Forbes, Editor-in-Chief (1954-90) James W. Michaels, Editor (1961-99) William Baldwin, Editor (1999-2010) 6 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 Tim Ferguson Editor, forbes asia globaleditor@forbes.com STR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Avik Roy OPINIONS Jessica Bohrer VP, EDITORIAL COUNSEL About ICTSI Headquartered in Manila, Philippines, International Container Terminal Services, Inc. (ICTSI) is in the business of port development, management, and operations. Independent of shipping, logistics, or consignee-related interests, ICTSI works transparently with all port community stakeholders. Operating in both developed and emerging market economies—in Asia Pacific, the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa—ICTSI has received global acclaim for its port privatization partnerships with governments. FORBES ASIA READERS SAY CEO/ASIA, FORBES MEDIA PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER, FORBES ASIA William Adamopoulos SENIOR VICE PRESIDENTS Tina Wee, Serene Lee EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Eugene Wong SENIOR DIRECTOR, REGIONAL SALES Lawrence Jang SENIOR DIRECTOR, MARKETING & AD SERVICES Aarin Chan DIRECTOR, CIRCULATION Eunice Soo DIRECTOR, EVENTS & COMMUNICATIONS Janelle Kuah DEPUTY DIRECTOR, EVENTS & COMMUNICATIONS Audra Ruyters DEPUTY DIRECTOR, CONFERENCES Jolynn Chua DEPUTY DIRECTOR, CIRCULATION Pavan Kumar SENIOR MANAGER, CONFERENCES Quek Xue Wei SENIOR MANAGER, MARKETING & RESEARCH Joan Low OFFICE MANAGER/ASSISTANT TO THE CEO/ASIA Jennifer Chung AD SERVICES MANAGER Fiona Carvalho AD SERVICES MANAGER-DIGITAL Keiko Wong MANAGER, EVENTS & COMMUNICATIONS Melissa Ng CONFERENCE MANAGERS Clarabelle Chaw, Cherie Wong ASSISTANT MANAGER, CONFERENCES Isabel Wong ADVERTISING EXECUTIVES Angelia Ang, Sharon Joseph, Sabrina Cheung MARKETING EXECUTIVE Gwynneth Chan CIRCULATION SERVICES Taynmoli Karuppiah, Jennifer Yim FORBES MEDIA CEO & EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN Michael S. Perlis PRESIDENT & COO Michael Federle CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER Mark Howard EDITOR-AT-LARGE/GLOBAL FUTURIST Rich Karlgaard GENERAL COUNSEL MariaRosa Cartolano PRESIDENT, FORBESWOMAN Moira Forbes SENIOR VP, CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS Mia Carbonell !,0!)!.ƫĂĀāĈƫđƫ+(1)!ƫāăƫđƫ1)!.ƫĉ CONVERSATION OUR STORY about a son of Indian immigrants who made it big in Texas real estate (“Austin Powered,” August, p. 70) inspired Priya Chaturvedi to post: “I came over from India 25 years ago so my kids can have this kind of opportunity. This guy gives me hope!” Divya Kumar added, “If this wasn’t in Forbes I’d never believe it. Only in America.” Ashley Carvajal took the long view: “Nate Paul is an icon and a role model for the American Dream. The next generation of leaders in this country will look a lot different from the current generation.” Robert Weintraub confessed to youth envy: “Makes me wish I was 20 again. And investing after the great recession. But no one gets rich in hindsight; credit to Nate Paul for having the foresight.” Our Q&A with Dr. Ming Wang of China’s Aier Eye Hospital (“Eyeing New Markets,” p. 30) was encouraging to David Dalton: “These are exciting times for the U.S. market and [for] better eye care. Go Ming, Go Aier!” THE INTEREST GRAPH Our readers gave the green light to our profile of developer Choo Chong Ngen: Meet the Hotel Founder Who Made His Fortune in Singapore’s Red-Light District Asia’s Best Under A Billion 2017: The 200 Public Companies That Are Reliable Growth Engines FORBES ASIA (ISSN 1793 2181) is published monthly with additional special issues in September and November. FORBES ASIA is printed at Times Printers in Singapore. Singapore MCI (P) 086/12/2016. Malaysia KDN PPS 1411/01/2013 (022902). All rights reserved. Title is protected through a trademark registered with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Forbes Asia is a trademark of Forbes Asia. 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To request permission to republish an article: call +1-212-620-2434 or fax +1-212-206-5118 or e-mail permissions@forbes.com. Reprints reproduced by others are not authorized. 8 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 “We only sell rooms; we don’t sell anything else. Red-light district— the whole world has a red-light district.” Hong Kong’s Sonia Cheng Opens New World Hotels for the Family Empire SUBSCRIBER SERVICE: To subscribe or order a back issue, change address or inquire about other customer services, please contact: E-mail: subscribe@forbesasia.com.sg. Fax: +65 6836 3405. Phone: +65 6836 1652; +65 6836 9476 23,064 page views “Sonia has a passion for hotels, and it shows.” China’s Largest Eye Doctor Chain Is Looking to Expand to the U.S. 5,222 China’s Online Reading Craze Is So Big It’s Challenging Amazon’s Kindle 4,723 “I’m an immigrant who wants to help and contribute to America.” actual photograph CAPTURE ETERNITY In the Philippines, at the crossing of Paseo de Roxas and Makati Avenue— a captivating 69–storey tower community. Vast living spaces soar amidst an array of lifestyle destinations, 6.5-hectares of refreshing greens and retail areas, complemented by premium-grade offices in proximity to renowned five-star hotels. Ayala Land Premier presents a timeless address gracefully unfolding— www.ayalalandpremier.com askayalalandpremier@ayalaland.com.ph HLURB TLS ENCRFO NO. 15-11-031 Project Location: Makati Avenue cor. Paseo de Roxas, Makati City Project Completion: March 2025 | Project Developer: Ayala Hotels Inc. artist’s perspective FACT & COMMENT “With all thy getting, get understanding” WHY GOP-CARE LOST THE PUBLIC BY STEVE FORBES, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 10 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 to go along with it (100% coverage until 2016, phasing down to 90% by 2020) were treated gingerly by Senate bill writers. Even on this issue Democrats succeeded in getting some RINO (Republican in name only) governors to shill for them by mouthing their demagogic attacks. Medicaid is the worst-designed health-insurance scheme ever devised by a free country: Spending is openended, yet outcomes for beneficiaries are awful. The only way to turn things around is to give governors the flexibility to design reforms that would improve coverage—30% of doctors now refuse to take on new Medicaid patients because reimbursements are low and paid out months later. Rhode Island, Indiana and other states have made some positive changes but had to battle Beltway bureaucrats to get the necessary “waivers” to do so. Only days before a Senate vote did the White House hold an event at which some of the people who have been harmed by Obamacare appeared—and there are millions of them. Yet there was no major advertising or social media campaign to point out Obamacare’s real-life horrors or to extol what the GOP was doing. The p.r. battle was over before it began. And don’t count on the Republicans to do any better in the future. Fraidy-Cat Republicans Health care isn’t the only big issue that has the GOP floundering. Taxes, amazingly, are another. When Democrats hurl the charge that Republican tax-reduction proposals “favor the rich,” too many GOPers quiver and quake and run for cover. Among Obamacare’s numerous taxes, for example, are additional levies on capital gains and dividends, both of which inhibit capital creation and productive investing. Without investment, we don’t progress, and living standards stagnate, then decline. Yet Republican senators decided to retain these KNS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES WHY ARE CONGRESSIONAL Republicans flailing about on repealing and replacing Obamacare? Why has public opinion gone against them on an issue that was critical to the GOP’s winning control of both the Senate and the House, not to mention the presidency? The law, passed more than seven years ago, had been immensely unpopular from the get-go. Answer: The GOP, in an incredible blunder, let its opponents define the terms of debate. Suddenly, the issue became how many millions of people would be stripped of medical insurance. The public became convinced that the only real question for Republicans was how much misery they were going to inflict. The sick and the chronically ill would quickly find themselves without coverage and be forced to camp out in overcrowded emergency rooms, hoping for help. The GOP’s prattling on about how many hundreds of billions of dollars it would rip out of the hide of Medicaid—money, moreover, that would be used to “pay” for tax cuts for the well-to-do—simply reinforced the public’s perception that, bad as Obamacare was, it would be preferable to whatever the Republicans proposed. That’s why every GOP health care bill polled worse than the Affordable Care Act. The mood became: Let’s try to fix Obama’s abomination as best we can rather than cruelly immiserate millions of our fellow citizens. The GOP became the party of Scrooge. The Democrats’ assaults were mostly nonsense, but they stuck. Adding to the misconception was the “scoring” by the Congressional Budget Office, which hasn’t made an accurate forecast in memory and which was stuffed with far-left liberals when the Democrats controlled Congress (all too typically, the GOP left them in place when it took over). Both the bill passed by the House and the legislation proposed by Senate leaders heaped on billions to make sure that those with chronic conditions weren’t left out. Obama’s vast expansion of Medicaid and the federal budgetary bribes to get states UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES antigrowth levies, lest they be accused of “favoring the rich.” For several years, a number of self-styled “populist” Republicans have been peddling policies they claim will help middle-class and lower-income Americans, while they diss “the rich” and show disdain for “the elites.” The kind of across-theboard tax cuts that wrought economic miracles for John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan? “Old-fashioned,” they sniff, sounding like progressives talking about the Constitution. One hears noises about Republicans raising income tax rates on the “superwealthy” as a way to win over Democrats and show voters that their hearts are with the middle class. “Silicon Valley liberals will love us,” they fantasize. All this is a sad commentary on a party that tells us it still admires Ronald Reagan. The Gipper would have gagged at such populist posturing. He understood—as too many Republicans these days do not—that voters want a growing economy and wages that grow right along with it. They couldn’t care less if Bill Gates does well; they just want to know that their own take-home pay is robustly moving up, that the U.S. is once again a vibrant land of opportunity. Republicans are fools to play the class-envy game. They will lose to the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren types every time. Voters want results, not a GOP version of socialism lite. If the economy gets out of its decade-old rut in the coming months, people won’t give a hoot about the semi-Marxist carping from the media and the Democrats. The formula for prosperity isn’t a new one: low tax rates and sound money (a subject for another time). The GOP tax bill should cast caution to the winds and go for big rate reductions. Knock the job-killing business rate of 35% down to 15%. It shouldn’t tax overseas earnings (the U.S. is one of the few countries that do this, which is why American companies keep over $2 trillion in earnings abroad). It should double the personal exemptions. Republicans should make a Reagan/Kennedystyle across-theboard income-tax The Gipper would have gagged at recent Republican posturing. rate cut of 10% or tax cuts!). Voters overwhelmingly more. And they preferred to have taxes tackled first, should slash the capital gains levy— but what do they know? Then you that always brings in more revenue were delayed by Speaker Paul Ryan’s immediately. strange obsession with a 20% border Very important, the GOP must sales tax that would have slammed make these reductions retroactive to working families who struggle to live the beginning of 2017. We want this paycheck to paycheck. tax bill to kick up the economy ASAP. So make simple cuts now, and go And it wouldn’t hurt if people got big for major tax reform after next year’s tax refunds next April. elections. The CBO will howl about deficits. Disregard these ignorant utterances. A booming economy is the only way the GOP will realistically reduce Uncle Sam’s red ink. If the U.S. had experienced normal economic growth Michael Connelly, one of America’s best over the past decade instead of the and most prolific novelists, has already pitiful sub-2% growth we were subcreated two memorable characters, dejected to, there wouldn’t be a budget tective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch (the deficit today. basis for the Amazon Prime series Bosch) Growth works wonders. and defense attorney Mickey Haller (the What those oh-so-sensitive Rebasis for the movie The Lincoln Lawyer, publicans should understand is this: starring Matthew McConaughey). In his No matter what they do, short of a newest masterpiece, The Late Show (Little, total surrender to Elizabeth Warren, Brown & Co., $28), Connelly introduces a they will be attacked as the lackeys third, Renée Ballard, a young, driven detecof Wall Street, the big banks, big tive who has been exiled to the Siberia of business and the rich. Get over it, the Los Angeles Police Department, the and do what’s right. And then watch night shift, after she filed a career-crippling the Democrats disintegrate. sexual harassment complaint against her As for a big overhaul of the federal powerful supervisor. Her partner at the income tax code, forget it. It’s too late time witnessed the incident but refused to now. back her up. This absorbing thriller finds You made two big mistakes. You a still unbowed Ballard quickly involved took up health care first because of in three cases, including a massacre at a your slavish devotion to those fake nightclub, which takes a chilling turn. She CBO revenue estimates (health care is told to stay off that case but doesn’t, even reform will save money to use for as she relentlessly pursues the other two. F New Mystery Woman SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 11 FORBES ASIA EDGING AWAY FROM CHINA TAIWAN FLIES SOUTH The reiteration of a policy push toward emerging Asia, as China ties fray, follows an entrepreneurial trail. BY RALPH JENNINGS O n a visit to Taiwan, Christopher Cua noticed people lining up for bubble tea. Cua lives in Metro Manila, where people like sweet caffeinated drinks, and no one there was selling the Taiwanese style of milk tea with marble-size tapioca balls. So in 2011, he opened the Philippine capital’s first Chatime franchise. Now Chatime has at least 40 outlets in Metro Manila. “The milk tea thing was a no-brainer,” says Cua, who’s ethnically Taiwanese and part of a family business that also includes a bakery. “I go to Taiwan a lot, and I always thought, ‘Filipinos would love this.’ ” That sentiment dovetailed with the 12 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 aims of La Kaffa, the Taiwan owner of the Chatime brand. With $65 million in 2016 revenues, La Kaffa has opened close to 400 stores in nine Southeast Asian countries as part of a global push. Its chairman, Henry Wang, says, “Tea culture acceptance in Southeast Asia isn’t bad, and consumption is always growing, so they embrace outside culture at a high rate. Southeast Asian countries care a lot about economic development, too.” Chatime’s footprint in the region of 630 million people makes it something of a role model for the Taiwan government. In October, President Tsai Ing-wen’s administration revived a policy to steer Taiwanese investors into South and Southeast Asia to SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 13 JULIAN ABRAM WAINWRIGHT FOR FORBES Christopher Cua’s Taiwanese-style tea store in Manila is something of a role model for the Taiwan government. FORBES ASIA EDGING AWAY FROM CHINA avoid overdependence on China. Tsai calls it the New Southbound Policy. China, while the traditional destination for Taiwanese capital since the 1970s, claims sovereignty over Taiwan despite self-rule on both sides since the 1940s. This makes business relations harder when the two sides get on poorly. Tsai rejects Beijing’s “one China” policy, angering the other side. China is pressing against Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic presence globally. A Taiwan-government-backed promotion agency flagged Chatime in Manila as a model for how Taiwanese companies should find a market niche outside China and fill it. The Philippines is one of 18 countries targeted by the New Southbound Policy. (Beyond Southeast Asia, there are Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand.) The policy fizzled under former Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui in 1993 and his successor, Chen Shui-bian, after 2000 because it failed to price in the attraction of China, where land and labor were cheaper than they are today, some analysts say. The current push also covers more than direct investment—tourism, labor and the recruitment of university students. according to Taiwan Tourism Bureau. The number of postsecondary students in Taiwan from New Southbound sources rose 10% in the six months to March from a year earlier while the number of nondegree university students—the largest category—from China declined 4% in the current academic year. China has nudged students and tourists away from Taiwan in response to President Tsai’s cool stance on engagement. China’s economic influence, backed by an $11.2 trillion GDP compared to Taiwan’s $519 billion, has drawn about 93,000 Taiwanese investors since 1988, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. But China’s rising costs were already pushing against new investment before Tsai took office in May 2016. Giant Taiwanese contract consumer-electronics manufacturer Hon Hai Precision opened two factories in Vietnam in 2007, for example. An estimated 3,500 Taiwanese do business in Vietnam because of its lowcost export manufacturing, a strength of Taiwan’s outbound investors over the past 50 years. Today’s New Southbound Policy calls for receptive target countries to let Taiwan set up investment-support offices. These would match Taiwanese investors with “WE THINK THAT THE NEW SOUTHBOUND POLICY WILL LIKELY PROVIDE SOME SUPPORT TO TAIWAN’S COMPETITIVENESS.” Those New Southbound nations account for 19% of Taiwan’s trade, and approved applications to the region are rising while those for China are declining, reports Taiwan’s Investment Commission. “At this stage, we think that the New Southbound Policy will likely provide some support to Taiwan’s competitiveness and foster diversification in trade, investment and broader relationships,” says Marie Diron of Moody’s Investors Service in Singapore. Tourist arrivals from New Southbound countries rose 29% in the six months to March while group tourist arrivals in Taiwan from China declined 30% in 2016, 14 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 local demand, Taiwan trade negotiator Tsai Yun-chung says. “What each country wants to eat is different,” he notes. “Each one’s taste is different.” Taiwan has renewed an agricultural cooperation deal with Indonesia and has begun discussing the same with India, Vietnam and the Philippines. Taiwan lacks free trade pacts with 16 of the 18 target countries because China normally forbids such formal agreements. Taipei officials have offered visa waivers to travelers from Brunei and Thailand. They’re further considering whether to let in more workers from Indonesia, Taiwan’s biggest migrant labor source at 240,000 strong today. But the 18-country region might not work as a market or a supply chain for core products such as machinery, some entrepreneurs fear. India is notoriously hard to crack without a local partner. Meantime, staunch Chinese allies such as high-growth Cambodia are discouraged from engaging Taiwan economically, as well. Despite their formal ties with a potentially angry China, others can find appeal in Taiwan links. In the Philippines, Taiwanese investors not only can easily move into food and beverage but can site factories that produce for export to the European Union, says Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist with BDO Unibank in Manila. Such investors can indirectly benefit from Manila’s duty-cutting trade preferences with the EU, he says. With China frowning, Taiwan would struggle to sign its own deal with Europe or join the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade zone being renegotiated by 11 Pacific Rim countries after the U.S. left in January. Young Southeast Asian consumers, meanwhile, are open to new brands and may be oblivious to a Taiwan connection. Some figure Chatime to be a domestic brand, franchisee Cua says. Chatime opens stores near business process outsourcing offices, a catalyst for the country’s recent economic growth. “The stores that do well are stores that do well on weekdays,” Cua says. Whereas 200 cups were sold per day at an original Metro Manila store in 2011, now several stores average 800 to 1,000 per day, he says. La Kaffa was not alone in seeing the opportunity back then. “We opened simultaneously with three Taiwanese brands, and now there are five of us,” the 29-year-old former bank employee says. His stores keep prices higher at $2 per cup to “raise the image a bit.” Taiwan’s latest official push only underscores what the early birds saw. If Southeast Asia can double the number of middle-class households to 120 million from 2010 to 2025, according to a 2014 McKinsey report, the region’s current 15% share of La Kaffa revenues stands to grow. Chairman Wang says, “Their ability to consume is terrifying.” F TECHNOLOGY BEN SIN // GADGETMAN THOMAS KUHLENBECK FOR FORBES (TOP) PANTS-POCKET LAPTOP WITH TECH ADVANCES making gadgets increasingly capable (and more affordable), there’s never been a better time to be a so-called “digital nomad.” I cringe at the term, but I can’t deny that it quite succinctly sums up people like me, who need only a solid internet connection and a digital device to do work. In the past year I’ve written articles under every circumstance imaginable: on a proper desktop computer at home, on a Chinese budget 2-in-1 tablet at the airport, on an iPad while standing in line to enter an event at MWC, on a smartphone while sitting at the beach in Phuket on Christmas Day, and on this, a comically tiny laptop, over brunch. This petite device is the GPD Pocket, a clamshell-style Windows 10 laptop that’s 7.1 inches wide, 4.3 inches long and about 0.8-inches thick. That’s only a tad larger than some phablets, or roughly the size of my girlfriend’s clutch. As its name implies, the device can indeed fit inside my pants pocket. GPD, which stands for Game Pad Digital, is a small Shenzhen company that has released a series of mobile gaming devices. In terms of physical build, the GDP Pocket doesn’t stray too far from the company’s previous device, the Win. The Pocket, however, is the company’s first laptop and thus has a full QWERTY keyboard in place of what used to be gaming buttons and D-pads. With an all-aluminum body, a sturdy clamshell hinge that opens up to almost 190-degrees and a 1080p screen, the hardware and build quality are top-notch. And the specs under the hood are solid too: The Pocket has an Intel Atom X7 Z8750 chipset and 8GB of RAM. The former is decent— the Atom chipset is for mid-tier devices—but the latter is impressive, considering that even new iPads and MacBooks, as well as some Microsoft Surface Books, don’t have 8GB of RAM. Basic laptop functions like word processing and video playback operated flawlessly, and the device even handled several games such as Asphalt 8: Airborne and Dinosaur Assassin without a hitch, though the frame rate stutters from time to time and the Pocket’s fan gets really loud. GPD obviously couldn’t incorporate a trackpad into a device this small. Instead there’s a “pointing stick,” a rubber nub like those found on ThinkPad devices. The nub here on the Pocket works surprisingly well—I’m able to navigate around with the mouse arrow quickly and pretty accurately. But because Windows 10 wasn’t meant to be used on a screen this small, some icons, particularly the “X” at the upper right corner of Web browsers and the Windows Start Menu icon on the lower left corner, are very hard to hit accurately with my index finger. Now on to the bad news, and it’s pretty major. The keyboard is just a bit too cramped for typing comfortably or accurately. On Typingtest.com’s Aesop test, I managed to score only 41-wordsper-minute on the Pocket, and this was after four days of getting used to the keyboard. To be fair, the Pocket is tough for me because I am a fast typer who types by touch. If you use your index fingers only and have to look at the keyboard as you type, then the Pocket’s keyboard won’t affect you much. Perhaps the most damning thing I can say about the Pocket’s keyboard is this: I couldn’t finish this article on it. About two paragraphs up I changed to my smartphone. I can solve the keyboard problem by using an external keyboard over Bluetooth or a USB connection—the Pocket, impressively, has most major ports and can even handle display output to a full 30-inch monitor—but carrying an extra accessory would defeat the purpose of using the “world’s smallest laptop,” right? I do see some scenarios where the Pocket can come in handy. Its size and solid display make for a good media-consumption device; if you rarely do word processing, then the one flaw of the Pocket isn’t a big deal. I often try to use a laptop on a plane only to have the person sitting in front of me recline their seatback, making the laptop fit nearly impossible. With the Pocket, that shouldn’t be a problem. With a price of about $550, the Pocket isn’t cheap. You can get some solid Chinese laptops for less, and you won’t have problems typing. F Game Pad Digital’s Pocket, a mere 7 inches wide. BEN SIN IS A HONG KONG-BASED CONTRIBUTOR TO FORBES.COM WHO WRITES ABOUT CONSUMER TECH. SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 15 FORBES ASIA GRAPHIC TESTIMONY China Travel: More Out Than In A striking aspect of China’s tourism story is that visits to China have fallen way behind the outbound traffic and the inbound numbers for the rest of Asia-Pacific. Where are the foreigners? —Jinshan Hong INBOUND TOURISM vs. OUTBOUND TOURISM TOURIST DEFICIT Excluding HK, Macau and Taiwan Chinese departures 60 Foreign arrivals 50 m il li o n s o f p a s sengers 40 30 57.6 20 million 10 0 26.0 2008 2009 million 2010 2011 2012 2013 2 014 2 015 30 million more outbound trips by SOURCE: Center for China & Globalization Chinese tourists (CCG). Chinese tourist departures INBOUND TOURISM GROWTH: CHINA vs. APAC COUNTRIES 193.4% Foreign tourist arrivals V is it o r a rr iv a ls 2 0 0 5 - 2 0 15 158.6% 134 120 +11.2% V is it s in m il li o n s +312.9% 70.3% 31 Japan 2005 SOURCES: CCG; Ctrip. APAC Average 81 .3% 119.7% 128 2015 Thailan d Ko r ea 11 .2% Singap SOURCES: CCG; Ctrip; o re C h ina Japan National Tourism Organization; Singapore Tourism Board; Korean Tourism Organization; thaiwebsites.com. CHINA’S SHARE OF INTERNATIONAL ARRIVALS IN APAC 25% 30% Growth of arrivals for APAC 81.3% 2015 SOURCES: CCG; Ctrip. 16 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 PETER AND MARIA HOEY FOR FORBES 2005 Thought Leaders JEAN-PIERRE LEHMANN // ASIAN SPOTLIGHT INTERESTING TIMES THERE IS AN ARAB PROVERB, inspired by the Koran, that says, “He who predicts the future lies, even if he tells the truth.” In other words: If you make a prediction and it turns out right, it’s sheer luck, mate! With that caveat, let me offer not a prediction but a hypothesis. On the basis of current trends, it would seem the world is experiencing one of its most profound transformations in history. In essence, for the last half-millennium, since the rise of the Portuguese seaborne empire in the late 15th century, the world has been dominated by the West. Japan was the only non-Western nation to emerge as a global power, but it did so not by challenging the West but by joining it. It never had Asian allies but rather three successive Western allies: imperial Britain from 1902 to 1922, while Japan was an imperialist nation; Nazi Germany from 1937 to 1944, during which period it became a fascist military dictatorship; and the U.S. since 1952, as it became a “Western” democracy and joined the “Western” alliance. China is rising as a, if not the, great global power of the 21st century, and the U.S., after having dominated the 20th century, is declining in the 21st. Until it entered its “era of humiliation” in the century-plus following the first Opium War (1839), China was a rich and proud power. It then declined precipitously: Its share of global GDP fell from an estimated 33% in 1820 to 4% in 1950—even though it had an estimated 20% of world’s population. Until fairly recently, the words “Chinese” and “poor” were synonymous. China has no Western allies, only two—sort-of—Asian allies: North Korea and Pakistan. Unlike Japan, China is not seeking to emulate any Western system. When you ask what China is about, the answer is “Socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The emerging Chinese challenge is military and economic—but also historical, cultural, political, geopolitical, philosophical and ideological. Just as it was essential for the non-Western world in the 19th and 20th centuries to learn about the West, so is it incumbent on all to learn about China. In doing so, it is difficult to imagine a better guide than Howard French’s Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power. This book is an outstanding font of knowledge and provides compelling insights into how China sees the world and its own destiny. It combines a bird’s-eye view of China’s past, present and possible future with a detailed worm’s-eye view, especially of its positions vis-à-vis Southeast Asian nations in the South China Sea and vis-à-vis Japan in the East China Sea. French presents the Chinese viewpoint. You don’t have to condone it, but to be awake in the 21st century, you have to understand it. You also have to understand how Chinese see world history and how it applies to them. Thus, Chinese thought and policy leaders are quite familiar with how the Monroe Doctrine allowed the U.S. to assert a hegemonic position in Central America and to transform the Caribbean into an American lake. A 21st-century version of that doctrine is being crafted in Beijing and applied to East Asia. The rise of China is half of the global picture. The other half is the decline of the U.S., or indeed of the West generally. That is the theme of Edward Luce’s recent book The Retreat of Western Liberalism. Luce demonstrates that while Donald Trump as president is a potential disaster, it is a disaster that was waiting to happen. The decline of the U.S. and the retreat of Western liberalism imply, among other things, that the Western alliance that played such a crucial role in the second half of the 20th century is kaput. As Luce points out, while the end-of-history theory that prevailed at the turn of the century presumed democracy had won, in fact over the past decade, 25 democracies have failed. Thus, the question is “whether the Western way of life, and our liberal democratic systems, can survive this dramatic shift of global power. . . . Donald Trump’s victory crystallizes THOMAS KUHLENBECK FOR FORBES “DONALD TRUMP AS PRESIDENT IS A POTENTIAL DISASTER, A DISASTER THAT WAS WAITING TO HAPPEN.” JEAN-PIERRE LEHMANN IS A CONTRIBUTOR TO FORBES.COM AND EMERITUS PROFESSOR AT IMD, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND; VISITING PROFESSOR AT HONG KONG UNIVERSITY AND NIIT UNIVERSITY, RAJASTHAN, INDIA. the West’s failure to come to terms with the reality it faces.” Recent events in the U.S. come to mind while reading this passage in Luce’s book: “The future of Western democracy looks bleak if American politics hardens into two racially hostile camps. Donald Trump consciously stokes racist sentiment, and has given a rocket boost to the ‘alt right’ fringe of neo-Nazis and white nationalists.” So as China rises and the U.S. declines, eyes are increasingly turning to Berlin and Angela Merkel. Germans—who on the global leadership front have been there, done that (and failed)— are not particularly keen to have this glory thrust upon them. F SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 17 FORBES ASIA BRIGHTOIL LOOKS AHEAD China’s Private Oil Force Sit Kwong Lam knows the drill: 25 years of outflanking state giants. BY SHU-CHING JEAN CHEN S it Kwong Lam, founder and chairman of Brightoil, is a career oilman who today occupies high ground, his office atop a gleaming glass skyscraper in Shenzhen. From an executive suite decorated with framed Chinese calligraphy, the billionaire commands a panoramic view of the Pearl River estuary. Started 25 years ago, Brightoil is China’s fourth-largest oil company—its bigger rivals are all state-owned. With enough storage capacity to hold one-fifth of China’s oil reserves, Brightoil is the main repository for southern China and, since 2010, has been China’s second-largest fuel-oil importer and supplier, mainly to marine transport. More lucrative still, however, and accounting for the bulk of Brightoil’s $7.4 billion in annual revenue, is upstream exploration of gas and oilfields, through a 2009 partnership with China’s largest oil firm, CNPC (China National Petroleum Corp.) in far west Xinjiang Province’s Tarim Basin. Sit is taking Brightoil farther into upstream exploration, with a 2014 purchase of oilfields in China’s Bohai Bay from Texas’ Anadarko Petroleum for $1 billion. He vows to transform it further from the trading concern he set up in Shenzhen in 1992, into a resources giant. (Below the radar, Sit’s private companies have bought oil supply tankers, at least since 2005, taken up a stake in a Chinese online insurer and drilled oil and gas both onshore—in Sichuan Province— and offshore, in the disputed area of the South China Sea near Vietnam he acknowledges below.) The energy tycoon’s early move into storage and terminals was well-timed. China would soon turn from an exporter of crude oil to a net importer. In 1996, he won government approval to build facilities, and in 1999 he struck a deal with CNPC to use them. Not all went according to plan. A sweeping restructuring of China’s oil industry in 1998 by the government voided all the licenses previously awarded to him and private-sector players. Undeterred, he reapplied for a trading license and obtained the right to be a wholesaler for finished petroleum products in 2002. From there, he branched into fuel oil, oil tankers, bunker fuel supply and, eventually, upstream exploration. He got Brightoil a backdoor listing in Hong Kong in 2008. Lately, low oil prices forced him to look for growth in the digital sphere. An online app launched in January 2016 to allow motor- 18 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 ists to “fill up” their accounts with gasoline credits, by volume, good at Brightoil’s network of 1,000 gas stations. It offers a 7% bonus and has racked up 4 billion yuan ($600 million) in sales. Online auto insurance and automotive aftersale services will come next. Here is our exchange with Sit, as edited: Forbes Asia: What are your views on the global oil prices and the global demand and supply of oil? Sit: The global oil price has been under intense pressure in the last two or three years. The average price now is $50. A strengthening dollar inevitably leads to low oil prices. Russia’s policy (as a result of Western sanctions) also contributes to low oil prices. In fact, the equilibrium between production and demand of oil has not changed much over the years, fluctuating by just between 3% and 5% of the equilibrium. The difference is the surplus oil. Has China’s oil consumption shown a macroeconomic rebound? Just look at China’s GDP figures. It has not dropped further. Let’s look at the demand first. The global crude demand still grew by 1% last year, doubling the rate the year before, but the global economy did not fare well. To take a pulse of the national economy, one only needs to look at the demand for electricity and energy, these basic figures. The number of cars in China grew by over 6% last year. China’s crude oil demand has grown in both 2015 and 2016 by 5.7% and 5.3%, respectively. Demand for natural gas grew by 8% in 2016, up from 1.6% in 2015. How could we say our economy was in bad shape? I feel we are still trending upward steadily. Is there a gap between Chinese domestic and international energy pricing? China adjusts pricing for finished petroleum products every ten working days to be in line with the international market price. In January 2016, the government introduced a new pricing policy. Before that, domestic retail prices went up and down with international prices. The new policy has imposed a floor price of $40 per barrel and capped it at $120. The time lag to catch up with the prevailing international market price is seven days, compared with international norms of two to three days. This means Chinese consumers would pay at a retail price of $40 when the global oil price plunges to $20, but would pay no more than $120 no matter what. There’s a strategic purpose here. We have taken a long-term view in buying this oilfield. It’s a massive project. It has no relation to the Chinese government. How much lower could oil prices go? Prices could hover between $45 and $60 a barrel in the second half, a process that would be affected by the pace of rate rise by the U.S. Fed. Our exploration cost is slightly over $50. Average production price for shale gas and shale oil in the U.S. is also around $50. Oil producers cannot operate anywhere below this level. Any plans for overseas acquisitions and fundraising? We have bought about more than $1 billion in assets overseas, including buying in Canada and America. We will continue to look for opportunities. But right now, we don’t have plans to raise dollar-denominated funds offshore. We have applied to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange to issue 5 billion yuan of yuan-denominated Panda bonds by phases. It is under review by the regulators. The purpose is to support the development of the “belt-and-road” initiative and replenish internal cash flows. Is the rise of new energy going to upend the oil market? The rise of new energy—from nuclear power, solar power, electric cars—accounts for a tiny fraction of market demand. In the next 10 to 20 years, new energy can’t possibly replace petroleum. China today has about 10 million vehicles powered by new energy, compared with close to 200 million of petroleum-powered cars. IMAGINECHINA Please comment on the recent the South China Sea spat between China and Vietnam involving a disputed oilfield called “block 136-03” or “Wanan Bei-21.” Brightoil was mentioned as a possible owner of that oilfield. It’s an oilfield my private company in Hong Kong bought in 2014. Brightoil has challenged the dominant state fuel retail concerns. How goes that? About 4 million consumers are using our mobile app, of which 20% to 30% are active users. They settle the payment through banks. With the oil price below the current level, it’s a good time to buy petrol and store it for future use. To grow the number to 100 million users should not be difficult, [although if] PetroChina or CNPC would one day enter the online market to compete with us, [that’s] a challenge we are very likely to need to tackle. F SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 19 FORBES ASIA A CHAT WITH . . . Dell’s New Destiny Michael Dell on artificial intelligence, managing creativity and turning the PC maker into a vertically integrated IT giant. Well, it’s pretty close. [Chuckles.] Pretty close. Explain your 2015 acquisition of EMC for $67 billion. I thought cloud was going to kill storage. Did you overpay? The idea that everything goes to the cloud isn’t correct. Earlier this year, the Uptime Institute asked CIOs, “Where do you have all your data?” Thirteen percent was in the public cloud, and I think 65% was on premises. Of course the cloud will grow. But it won’t take everything. Artificial intelligence is getting huge attention these days, too. AI is a rocket ship. Data is the fuel. What you’re seeing now is artificial intelligence used in a narrow way, in which you’re taking a relatively confined problem and expressing it with some software to help reach a conclusion in, say, finance, health care or transportation. What’s exciting is the explosion in the number of connected nodes and the massive amounts of data that are being created. It’s really exciting to see all the deep learning, all the computational power that’s being acquired. We’re building a lot of those engines and working with the companies that are out there creating the tools to be able to do that. Again, the fuel for this is the data. And nobody stores more critical data in the world than we do. So that, for us, is quite exciting. I absolutely get the sense that it’s some kind of inflection point. Cisco’s John Chambers predicts 50 billion sensors by 2020, tripling from today. Agree? I think that could actually be low. They’re going to be anywhere there’s electricity. When exactly did Dell change its name to Dell Technologies? It was September 2016, when we were combining our various businesses, like EMC and Pivotal—signifying that we are now a fundamentally different company. You began as a build-ityour-way supplier of PCs. Now you’re a vertically integrated IT company selling to enterprises. Quite a change. We have a unique structure. Under the Dell umbrella, we have some smaller, fast-moving startups like Pivotal that have unique and huge opportunities. Then we have the giant scale, such as EMC. How do you keep all your CEOs motivated? They once got to operate pretty autonomously. What you don’t want to do is hold them back. You can’t hinder their creativity, their ability to imagine and dream. You let them do their own thing. Does this insight come from being an entrepreneur yourself? It’s the only way I know. I don’t have anything to compare it to. Dell was the ’90s’ best-performing stock, then it declined and went flat. Glad you’re basically private now? Your horizon changes as a private company. We’ve asked our teams to think in terms of three, five and ten years. That’s a bit of a mind twister when you’ve been doing it in shorter-term increments for a long time. Advice to entrepreneurs starting out? Have big ears and listen. Learn from your customers. It’s not that hard to figure out. Is digital transformation the CIO’s responsibility, the CEO’s, or someone else’s? The IT organization can’t drive or lead a digital transformation. It has to come from the business and the business strategy, because they’re fundamental to how a company or an organization evolves. But it also expands the importance and the role of IT far beyond what they had ever been before. What does your business look like then? That’s the question every CEO should be asking. It’s hard to believe Dell is 33 years old. It’s been a wonderful journey, but it still feels like we’re at the beginning, in terms of technology’s role in the world. The last third of a century’s been pretty amazing, but I think that’ll seem like nothing compared with what’s going to happen in the next third. F MICHAEL DELL SPOKE WITH RICH KARLGAARD, OUR EDITOR-AT-LARGE AND GLOBAL FUTURIST. THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN EDITED AND CONDENSED. FOR THE EXTENDED CONVERSATION, VISIT FORBES.COM/SITES/RICHKARLGAARD. 20 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 ALEXANDRA VALENTI FOR FORBES At age 26, you boldly predicted Dell would be bigger than IBM someday. IBM did $80 billion in sales in its latest fiscal year; you did nearly $20 billion in the first quarter. Are you as big as IBM now? FORBES ASIA LUXURY LINEAGE Jimmy Choo’s Own Adventure IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER: TIM GRAHAM/GETTY IMAGES; DAVID HARRISON/EYEVINE/REDUX; ANWAR HUSSEIN/GETTY IMAGES; ANDY SHAW/BLOOMBERG; PETER MACDIARMID/GETTY IMAGES; MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES; JASON ALDEN/BLOOMBERG; INDIGO/GETTY IMAGES BY MICHAEL SOLOMON IN 21 YEARS, the luxury-footwear brand Jimmy Choo has grown from a modest London startup to a global brand that sold for $1.2 billion in July. How did it make that giant leap? It was thanks in large part to Princess Diana, Sex and the City and millions of women who fell for the shoes head over heels. Let’s retrace the steps . . . 1986 Jimmy Choo, a Malaysian-born cobbler, opens a made-to-order shoe boutique in London’s East End for private clients, including Princess Diana. 1997 Jimmy Choo opens its first boutique on London’s Motcomb Street. That same year, Diana is photographed on the red carpet wearing Jimmy Choo slingbacks. In 1998, the first U.S. store opens in New York, where the shoes start at about $300 a pair. 1996 With a £150,000 loan (or $365,000 today) from her father, former British Vogue accessories editor Tamara Mellon and Choo launch Jimmy Choo Ltd. 2004 A year after launching a handbag line, Jimmy Choo, which now has 23 stores, is sold to another PE shop, Lion Capital, for £101 million (about $190 million today). Mellon remains a minority owner. 2007 A 60% stake in Jimmy Choo, now with 60 stores, is sold to management firm TowerBrook Capital for £185 million (about $430 million today). 2009 At her husband’s first inaugural ball, Michelle Obama steps out in Jimmy Choo heels—now on display at the Smithsonian. 2011 Having expanded into perfume and eyewear, Jimmy Choo is sold again—to the German luxury-goods firm Labelux for $850 million. In November, Mellon exits the company. 2014 With 177 stores in 34 countries, Jimmy Choo becomes the first luxury footwear brand to go public. About 25% of the company is sold in a London IPO at 140 pence, or $2.24, giving it a market capitalization of about $870 million. 2001 Choo sells his 50% of the company to Equinox Holdings, a private equity firm, for $30 million. Mellon and co-creative director Sandra Choi, Choo’s niece, stay with the company. 2000 In Season 3 of Sex and the City, Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw has a Cinderella moment while running for the Staten Island Ferry and exclaims, “I lost my Choo!” 2017 In July, Jimmy Choo is acquired by Michael Kors for $1.2 billion. Sandra Choi plans to stay with the company, whose shoes (which range from $425 to $4,595) are now a favorite of Princess Diana’s daughter-in-law, Kate Middleton. SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 21 FORBES ASIA O FORBES ASIA’S LIST OF THE BEST PUBLICLY TRADED BIG COMPANIES. ur terms of revenue. 13th India put the second-largest annual list number of companies on the list, of the best big eight, the same as last year. There are publicly traded comthree each from Hong Kong and Japan. South panies honors corporate stars throughout Korea placed just two companies, down from five in 2016. Last year the Asia-Pacific region, but China is grabbing Vietnam put a company on the Fab 50 for the first time. There is also most of the spotlight. This year 29 of the 50 one Vietnamese company this year with the debut of Mobile World companies are headquartered on the mainInvestment. Overall, 20 companies cracked the Fab 50 for the first land. That’s the most ever, up from 22 last time, and 8 returned after missing out for a year or more. year and its previous record of 25 in 2015. To determine the Fab 50, we start with a pool of 1,694 publicly Eleven of the Chinese companies are traded companies that have at least $1.8 billion in annual revenue. new to the Fab 50 this year, reflecting the (Private companies, such as China’s Huawei Technologies, are not country’s deep pool of entrepreneurial included.) We then knock out companies that are losing money or talent. At the same time China’s dynamic whose revenue is less than it was five years ago. Next we toss out economy means that many companies carrying a high debt ratio or that have more of the hotshots of just a few than 50% state-ownership. The goal is to highlight BY JOHN KOPPISCH years ago no longer make the entrepreneurial outfits, not those living off of governAND ANDREA MURPHY ment connections. Companies that are more than cut. Once again China boasts the two most valuable compa50%-owned by listed parents are also culled. Finally we nies on the list, Alibaba and Tencent, and run the remaining contenders though a battery of more than a dozen those two are also ranked first and second in financial measures. The goal is to produce a stellar lineup of highnet profits. But an Indian newcomer, Rajesh performing blue chips, the region’s best of the best. F Exports, is the largest outfit on the roster in Reporting by Grace Chung, Rebecca Feng and Anuradha Raghunathan 22 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 The Fab 50 YUNNAN BAIYAO The Picture of Health Combining traditional Chinese medicine with modern marketing, Yunnan Baiyao is building a major pharmaceutical company. THERE ARE 20 NEW MEMBERS ON OUR LIST, AND CHINA LEADS THE WAY AGAIN WITH 29 ENTRIES. CHINA AAC Technologies YEARS ON LIST: 2 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 2 INDUSTRY: ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS SALES: $2.3 BIL MARKET CAP: $18.1 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: KOH BOON HWEE Alibaba Group YEARS ON LIST: 2 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 2 INDUSTRY: INTERNET RETAILING SALES: $23.5 BIL MARKET CAP: $399 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: JACK MA BY MICHAEL SCHUMAN AND JANE HO Baidu YEARS ON LIST: 6 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 6 INDUSTRY: INTERNET SERVICES SALES: $10.6 BIL MARKET CAP: $61.8 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: ROBIN LI BYD 3 YEARS ON LIST: 2 INDUSTRY: MOTOR VEHICLES SALES: $5.5 BIL MARKET CAP: $5.7 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: WANG CHUAN-FU China Gas Holdings 3 YEARS ON LIST: 3 INDUSTRY: GAS UTILITIES SALES: $4.1 BIL MARKET CAP: $12.1 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: LIU MING-HUI Cogobuy Group Ì INDUSTRY: INTERNET RETAILING SALES: $1.9 BIL MARKET CAP: $893 MIL TOP EXECUTIVE: KANG “JEFFREY” JING-WEI Country Garden A spoonful of medicine that harks back to a more traditional time. T IMAGINECHINA he aerosol cans rolling along an assembly line at a Yunnan Baiyao factory in southwest China tell you everything you need to know about the health care company’s unusual prescription for success. The process of filling, testing and packing the cans is so automated that the few people involved do no more than haul the boxes off the end of the conveyer belt. Yet the stuff inside harks back to a time before factories even existed. The pain-relieving concoction is rooted in ancient Chinese medical practices. “Combine Chinese traditional medicine with the life of modern people and convenience of use,” says Yin Pinyao, Yunnan Baiyao’s austere, bespectacled president. “That is the way we innovate.” That combination—the ultramodern with the extremely old-fashioned—has transformed Yunnan Baiyao Group into one of the unlikeliest rising stars of Chinese business. Over the last five years, its revenue doubled to $3.4 billion in 2016, while net profits did even better, increasing by 140% to $440 million. The market capitalization of the Shenzhenlisted company has surged as well—by two and a half times since the end of 2011 to more YEARS ON LIST: 2 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 2 INDUSTRY: PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT SALES: $23.1 BIL MARKET CAP: $25.2 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: YEUNG KWOK-KEUNG Foshan Haitian Flavouring & Food Ì INDUSTRY: CONDIMENTS SALES: $1.9 BIL MARKET CAP: $16.8 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: PANG KANG Geely Automobile YEARS ON LIST: 4 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 2 INDUSTRY: MOTOR VEHICLES SALES: $8.1 BIL MARKET CAP: $21.7 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: LI SHU-FU ÌNEW TO LIST 3RETURNEE SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 23 FORBES ASIA FAB 50 — YUNNAN BAIYAO A PIECE OF THE ACTION, AFTER EIGHT FRUSTRATING YEARS than $13 billion. Such vitality has landed Yunnan Baiyao on Forbes Asia’s Fabulous 50 list of the region’s best public companies for the second time; it also made the list in 2015. That performance is a miraculous recovery for what had been a very sick firm. The company was founded in 1971 in the city of Kunming by the Yunnan provincial government to mass-produce a powder used to treat wounds. (The name Yunnan Baiyao translates to “white powder from Yunnan.”) Invented by a Kunming doctor in 1902, the formula is a mixture of herbs that are all ingredients in Chinese traditional medicine and are kept secret by the company. The powder has been proven to help stop bleeding and prevent infection, and it was used effectively by Chinese troops during World War II. By the 1990s, though, Yunnan Baiyao’s condition seemed terminal. Its white powder was falling out of favor as wealthi24 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 er Chinese gained better access to modern treatments, and the company’s sales were in decline. Yet Yunnan Baiyao stubbornly kept churning out that powder—the main product it sold. In 1999, Yin and Chairman Wang Minghui, then executives at another state-owned pharmaceutical firm, were tasked by their government bosses to cure the ailing company. “We found that baiyao products had great potential,” says Yin. “The issue was how to combine the traditional medicine with modern life to meet the needs of the market.” Wang and Yin administered a dose of intensive therapy. They upgraded the research and development team to craft new products and the marketing department to sell them. The strategy, which they called “new baiyao,” was straightforward: Utilize the still well-known powder in all sorts of new ways to appeal to today’s Chinese consumer. Out poured an entire range of baiyao-infused items: toothpaste, bandages, hemorrhoid cream and those pain-relieving aerosol sprays bouncing down the Kunming assembly line, to name just a few. Then, starting around 2005, Yunnan Baiyao expanded even further, into products based on other forms of Chinese traditional medicine. Herbs are mixed into shampoos to soothe itchy scalps and into soaps to supposedly slow aging. Yunnan Baiyao plugs these medicinal qualities to make the case that its products are superior to their run-of-the-mill competitors. Adhesive bandages injected with the magical white powder are marketed under the motto “It heals faster with baiyao.” One advertisement for baiyao toothpaste shows an elderly gentleman pointing to the brand and reminding shoppers, “It took care of me when I was a soldier at war,” while a younger woman lifts the tube and says, “Now it takes care of our whole family.” CHINA PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES Billionaire Chen Fashu, the chairman of Newhuadu Industrial Group, finally won a major stake in Yunnan Baiyao in March, ending a long pursuit that began in 2009. But the delay cost him dearly: He had to cough up a much higher price than he would have paid originally. Eight years ago, Chen agreed to buy state-owned tobacco company Hongta’s 12% stake in Yunnan Baiyao for $320 million. He paid the money up front, before he received regulatory approval. It never came. In 2012, China National Tobacco, the ultimate parent of Hongta and all other tobacco companies in the country, said it vetoed the transaction because of concerns that state assets were being sold on the cheap. Disappointed, Chen filed a lawsuit, claiming that the parent company had no right to call off the deal. The battle became one of China’s most prominent equity dispute cases, and in 2014 the final verdict was handed down—and Chen lost. Undeterred, he found other ways to accumulate shares, building a 0.9% personal stake in Yunnan Baiyao as well as a 3.4% stake through Newhuadu. This year’s deals, including one in June in which he sold a small number of shares, raise his ownership to roughly 18%. Newhuadu did not respond to Forbes Asia’s request for comment. Chen’s luck might have changed thanks to China’s latest round of stateowned-enterprise reforms to promote more private-sector ownership and boost efficiency and profitability. “Baiyao has always been a marketoriented company, but the new [ownership] structure has completely removed the administrative [influence],” says its president, Yin Pinyao. Unlike eight years ago, the transaction in March supplied Yunnan Baiyao with capital. “It will fuel Baiyao’s mergers and acquisitions, which is what most big international companies have been doing for expansion, and put Baiyao on the fast track,” says Yin. That’s something Chen will be Chen Fashu happy to see. —J.H. The Fab 50 GoerTek The message caught changing Chinese consumers at just the right moment. As households have become wealthier, they’ve also become more health-conscious—and more willing to spend on their well-being. “People here pay more attention to the prevention of disease rather than just curing it,” says Yin. “This is the strength of traditional Chinese medicine. Compared with modern medicine, that is our uniqueness.” That’s also boosted the company’s profitability in a cutthroat industry. By marketing its products as “medicated,” Yunnan Baiyao has been able to charge a premium. A tube of baiyao toothpaste, for instance, retails for roughly twice as much as a similar-size tube of Colgate, and some consumers are willing to pay up. Tu Xiaoling, an administrator at a Shanghai university, began buying Yunnan Baiyao’s pricey toothpaste two years ago, hoping it would help ease her bleeding gums. “Traditional Chinese medicine cures the problems from the roots,” she says. In fact, some of these products have gained significant market share. Its toothpaste grabbed 16.5% of the Chinese market in 2016, ranking it the second most popular in the country. Baiyao adhesive bandages lead that segment of the local market. According to market research firm Euromonitor, Yunnan Baiyao has been steadily gaining share in several product categories in China in recent years, including beauty and personal-care products and over-thecounter medications. The Chinese government is encouraging even bigger sales. In recent years, Beijing has been promoting Chinese medicine as part of a revival of China’s ancient heritage, from Confucian moral teachings to traditional arts, in a quest to foster national pride, project cultural influence and, of course, create new jobs and exports. The State Council, China’s top governing body, recently went so far as to call on modern doctors to study the wonders of Chinese medicine. The state is also backing its pronouncements with hard cash. Farmers who grow the herbs and plants used in traditional treatments receive tax breaks, helping to reduce the cost of making Chinese medicine products. In July, a new law came into effect that calls for enhanced training for Chinese medicine practitioners and promises even more generous state assistance. All these trends point to a potentially larger market for Yunnan Baiyao. Wang Yinghu, senior researcher at consulting firm Forward Industries Institute in Shenzhen, forecasts that the sales of Chinese traditional medicine will more than double by 2022 to $270 billion, or about 35% of the total health care market. Yin intends to capture that growth by rolling out a steady stream of new products. In 2014, Yunnan Baiyao purchased a 40% stake in Qingyitang, a Chinese manufacturer of female sanitary products, into which Yin aims to instill traditional medicine. Other new items include a children’s probiotic toothpaste and an all-natural face mask that the company boasts is edible (a claim we did not test). Meanwhile, Yunnan Baiyao is in the midst of its own makeover. In recent months, the government has sold part of its stake. In March, the provincial commission that was the biggest shareholder sold half of its stake in Yunnan Baiyao’s holding company for $3.8 billion to the Fuzhou-based conglomerate Newhuadu Industrial Group, which specializes in supermarkets and shopping malls. Then in June, Newhuadu and the provincial government sold a combined 10% stake to medical-equipment maker Yuyue Technology Development, headquartered in Zhenjiang, for $835 million. The two deals leave government-controlled entities owning less than a third of Yunnan Baiyao. The privatization “will help improve the company’s management, boost its performance in the capital market and gain the company a more competitive edge,” says Wang of Forward Industries. Yin may need all the help he can get. As China’s population ages and the market for health care swells, every company making drugs or personal-care products is looking to the country as a source of growth. But Yin believes that Chinese tradition will continue to be Yunnan Baiyao’s advantage. “We have a lot of expertise in this field,” he says. “We can continue to create products that are interesting and new.” F YEARS ON LIST: 3 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 3 INDUSTRY: ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS SALES: $2.9 BIL MARKET CAP: $10.2 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: JIANG BIN Great Wall Motor 3 YEARS ON LIST: 6 INDUSTRY: MOTOR VEHICLES SALES: $14.3 BIL MARKET CAP: $11.8 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: WANG FENG-YING Guangdong Haid Group YEARS ON LIST: 2 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 2 INDUSTRY: AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS SALES: $4.1 BIL MARKET CAP: $4.3 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: XUE HUA Huadong Medicine YEARS ON LIST: 3 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 3 INDUSTRY: PHARMACEUTICALS SALES: $3.8 BIL MARKET CAP: $7.1 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: LI BANG-LIANG Kangmei Pharmaceutical YEARS ON LIST: 3 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 3 INDUSTRY: PHARMACEUTICALS SALES: $3.2 BIL MARKET CAP: $15.6 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: MA XING-TIAN Longfor Properties 3 YEARS ON LIST: 3 INDUSTRY: PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT SALES: $8.3 BIL MARKET CAP: $14 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: WU YA-JUN Luxshare Precision Ì INDUSTRY: OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY SALES: $2.1 BIL MARKET CAP: $10.2 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: WANG LAICHUN Midea Group Ì INDUSTRY: HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES SALES: $23.9 BIL MARKET CAP: $38.6 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: PAUL FANG Nanjing Xinjiekou Department Store Ì INDUSTRY: RETAILING SALES: $2.4 BIL MARKET CAP: $6.5 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: YANG HUAI-ZHEN NetEase YEARS ON LIST: 3 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 3 INDUSTRY: INTERNET SERVICES SALES: $5.7 BIL MARKET CAP: $36.2 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: DING “WILLIAM” LEI S.F. Holding Ì INDUSTRY: COURIER SERVICES SALES: $8.6 BIL MARKET CAP: $31.5 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: WANG WEI ÌNEW TO LIST 3RETURNEE SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 25 R SA SIA FO BE Getting Credit Sanjiv Bajaj is making it easier to take out loans for small purchases and turning his family’s Bajaj Finserv into an Indian consumer’s best friend. BY ANURADHA RAGHUNATHAN W hen Sanjiv Bajaj, a fourth-generation scion of the 91-year-old Bajaj Group, took the reins of a newly carved-out financialservices company in 2008, he was staring 26 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 at a huge opportunity in under-banked and underinsured India. It was also a chance to prove his mettle: Older brother Rajiv was already running flagship Bajaj Auto, a leading motorcycle manufacturer. “There was risk because financial services were new to me,” says Sanjiv. “But there was excitement because I was building something new. We may never build the largest financial-services business in India, but we can build excellence.” And that’s just what he did. This year Pune-based Bajaj Finserv strides onto the Fab 50 for the second time in a row. The Fab 50 Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Ì INDUSTRY: PHARMACEUTICALS SALES: $2.2 BIL MARKET CAP: $9.2 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: GUO GUANGCHANG Shenzhen O-Film Tech YEARS ON LIST: 3 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 3 INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY EQUIPMENT SALES: $4 BIL MARKET CAP: $8.2 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: CAI RONG-JUN Sunny Optical Technology Ì INDUSTRY: OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY SALES: $2.2 BIL MARKET CAP: $14.8 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: YE LIAONING Tencent Holdings YEARS ON LIST: 9 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 9 INDUSTRY: INTERNET SERVICES SALES: $22.9 BIL MARKET CAP: $387 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: MA HUA-TENG Vipshop Holdings Ì INDUSTRY: INTERNET RETAILING SALES: $8.5 BIL MARKET CAP: $5.7 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: SHEN “ERIC” YA Yonghui Superstores 3 YEARS ON LIST: 2 INDUSTRY: RETAILING SALES: $7.4 BIL MARKET CAP: $9.9 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: ZHANG XUAN-SONG YTO Express Group Ì INDUSTRY: COURIER SERVICES SALES: $2.5 BIL MARKET CAP: $7.6 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: YU HUI-JIAO Yunnan Baiyao Group 3 YEARS ON LIST: 2 INDUSTRY: PHARMACEUTICALS SALES: $3.4 BIL MARKET CAP: $14 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: WANG MING-HUI Zhejiang Dahua Technology Ì INDUSTRY: SECURITY EQUIPMENT & SERVICES SALES: $2 BIL MARKET CAP: $11.3 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: FU LI-QUAN H O N G KO N G “We have grown very well, but we are still very small,” says Sanjiv Bajaj, managing director of Bajaj Finserv. RITAM BANERJEE FOR FORBES It produced a 17% jump in revenue, to $3.7 billion, and 19% growth in net profits, to $337 million, for the year ended March 31. The stock price has doubled over the past 12 months. Listed Bajaj Finance is the crown jewel of what is now a financial conglomerate, CK Asset Holdings Ì accounting for 40% of its revenue and catering to a swathe of customers from just below middle class all the way up to high-net-worth individuals. It’s a leader in financing consumer products, funding one out of every four flat-screen television sets in the country. It also makes loans for INDUSTRY: PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT SALES: $9 BIL MARKET CAP: $31.9 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: VICTOR LI Sino Biopharmaceutical YEARS ON LIST: 2 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 2 INDUSTRY: PHARMACEUTICALS SALES: $2 BIL MARKET CAP: $6.4 BIL TOP EXECUTIVES: THERESA TSE, TSE PING ÌNEW TO LIST 3RETURNEE SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 27 FORBES ASIA FAB 50 — BAJAJ FINSERV STATE BANKS’ LOSSES ARE FAB 50’S GAINS discretionary spending and even for splurges on, for example, luxury watches, stem-cell storage or cosmetic surgery. “Consumer-products financing really brought them into the limelight and propped them up as a different player with a niche product,” says Kajal Gandhi, banking analyst at Mumbai’s ICICIdirect. com. “These are short-duration loans. The churn is faster, and they completely replenish the loan book every year.” The all-out attempt to woo the consumer has helped build a base of 85 million customers, with 10 million being added each year. But it isn’t without challenges. “When you sell a sporty motorcycle, the customer can touch the petrol tank, kick the tires and hear the whir of the engine,” explains the 48-year-old Bajaj. “There’s an appeal on the product for which the person is willing to pay a premium and take it home. That’s not the case with loans and insurance.” 28 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 That’s why Bajaj has tied up with 40,000 retailers selling everything from modular kitchens and mattresses to mobile phones. The financing options bring in fresh buyers. Take G. Thirulogachandar, 47, who recently bought a $700, large-screen Haier LED TV at a store in Chennai. “I wouldn’t have been able to buy it with one single payment. It helps that the payments are spread over eight months.” He runs a small business and got 0% financing from Bajaj. Bajaj Finance has also allied with Kishore Biyani’s Future Group, a top retailer, to convert any purchase over $75 into monthly installments. “He [Bajaj] is more about doing rather than talking,” says Biyani. “This company is very refreshing because it’s simple, serious and data-driven.” Indeed, data analytics has helped Bajaj track millions of customers while keeping bad loans in check. The amount of its nonperforming assets is among the lowest of India’s nonbanking finance companies. “They [Bajaj] have all the systems and processes in place, which is why they can pick and choose customers,” says Alpesh Mehta, research analyst at Motilal Oswal. “They can take an intelligent credit risk on any customer, whether he is in a tier 2 or tier 3 city. It’s very difficult to replicate their analytics.” Bajaj Finance boasts $10.7 billion in assets under management, and Motilal Oswal projects this figure to more than double over the next three or four years, buoyed by selling more of its products to each customer, winning more customers and expanding into new regions. In insurance, Bajaj Finserv is not a leader but it’s gaining ground. In the past year it issued 10 million policies for health care, motor, marine and crop insurance, and it’s one of the most profitable players in the general insurance DHIRAJ SINGH/BLOOMBERG Four of the eight Indian companies making the Fab 50 list this year come from the financial-services sector. The three banks—HDFC Bank, IndusInd Bank and Yes Bank—and the one nonbanking financial company, Bajaj Finserv, were helped by the fate of public-sector banks that are reeling under bad loans. The four produced stellar growth despite a slowdown in the industrial sector and muted credit growth—5.1% in fiscal 2017, down from 12.6% two years earlier. With government-owned banks having lost money the last two years and now trying to get their books in order, private-sector banks wooed away some of their customers—and won new ones— HDFC makes our list for the 11th time, the most of any company. with better terms and pricing. Net nonperforming assets for the overall banking sector stood at $68 billion as of March 31, with public-sector banks accounting for the bulk of that. Many of them are reeling from the corporate loans they issued during the euphoria preceding the global financial crisis that have since gone bad. HDFC Bank makes the list for the 11th time—the most of any company. The $70.6 billion (market cap) bank fell off only in 2011 after first cracking the Fab 50 in 2006. The $2.8 billion (fiscal 2017 revenue) IndusInd Bank—which registered 20% sales growth over the past year—is on the list for the second time in a row. Mumbai’s Yes Bank, with revenue of $3.1 billion, debuts after notching a 29% leap in net profits. —A.R. The Fab 50 WH Group sector. It ranked No. 1 in the private lifeinsurance sector for the past year in terms of number of lives insured, according to the insurance regulatory agency IRDA. Bajaj operates two insurance segments: general insurance through Bajaj Allianz General Insurance and life insurance through Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance. The German insurer Allianz holds 26% in the two entities; Bajaj Finserv owns the rest. Bajaj Finance also enjoys synergy with Bajaj Auto. It finances one out of three motorcycles and one out of five threewheelers sold by Bajaj Auto in India, and buyers get the option of insuring their new wheels with Bajaj Allianz General Insurance. But this is only a small part of Bajaj Finance’s business. Born into a storied business family, Sanjiv Bajaj is the great-grandson of founder Jamnalal Bajaj and the second son of Bajaj Group chairman and billionaire Rahul Bajaj. He studied at a Catholic convent school run by Swiss missionaries. “It was a fairly simple, middle-class experience,” he says, noting that the students came from all socioeconomic groups. “It created a very solid foundation.” He went on to get a mechanicalengineering degree from the government engineering college in Pune. While there, the lanky, 6-foot-3 Bajaj played basketball for the varsity team. After a brief stint at Bajaj Auto, he earned a master’s in manufacturing systems from the University of Warwick in the U.K. and an M.B.A. from Harvard. For ten years, until 2007, he took on a variety of roles at Bajaj Auto, ranging from controlling costs on the shop floor to managing investments and revving up exports. Then the auto and financial-services units were split and Bajaj took charge of the latter. The year he took over, Bajaj Finserv reported an $8 million loss. Bajaj wasn’t deterred: “Luckily, we had all the products within the three companies to cater to the entire financial life cycle of a person.” And he could lean on his uncle Nanoo Pamnani, a career Citibanker who mentored him and now serves as Bajaj Finserv’s vice chairman; Rahul is chairman. Early on Bajaj decided that while growth was important, it wouldn’t come at the cost of profitability. For instance, when the company was considering selling insurance through large banks, it decided against it because the relationships were costly. It focused instead on smaller banks. Similarly, it began issuing infrastructure loans in 2011 but stopped after 18 months. “These loans help you add to your books quickly but could also prove to be a distraction,” he says. Bajaj also plays an active role in human resources, getting involved in appraisals, promotions and job rotations. “The challenge in any organization is in stagnation of ideas or poor execution, both of which comes back to people,” he says. His job is cut out for him: “How do we align and keep our top 500 people motivated and fully equipped and accountable?” In a crowded industry Bajaj Finserv faces off with many companies across several segments, from Chennai’s Shriram Group to Fab 50 perennial HDFC Bank and Mumbai’s Capital First. So it tries to separate itself from the pack with technology, constantly seeking out fresh ideas across the globe. In April, Bajaj was in Silicon Valley meeting with executives from Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce as well as 40 startups. “There’s so much change and innovation happening,” he says. “We pick up what’s relevant and use the technology that’s applicable to us.” While dad Rahul acts as “a check and balance,” the son says he enjoys a free hand in running the company. “We have a very productive and highly accountable engagement,” says Bajaj, who lives with his wife and two children in the same house as his father. The two brothers sit on each other’s boards; there’s also a younger sister who’s not involved in the group. While work takes up a chunk of his time, Bajaj has not lost his sporty bent—taking time to swim, walk or play tennis and basketball. Yogic breathing also gets its slot a few times a week. But the business vision is always clear and present. “We have grown very well, but we are still very small,” observes Bajaj. “I see the opportunity for us to be the financial-services partner for a large part of India.” F YEARS ON LIST: 2 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 2 INDUSTRY: MEAT PROCESSOR SALES: $21.5 BIL MARKET CAP: $14.7 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: WAN LONG INDIA Bajaj Finserv YEARS ON LIST: 2 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 2 INDUSTRY: FINANCIAL SERVICES SALES: $3.7 BIL MARKET CAP: $13 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: SANJIV BAJAJ HDFC Bank YEARS ON LIST: 11 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 6 INDUSTRY: BANKING SALES: $12.8 BIL MARKET CAP: $70.6 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: ADITYA PURI IndusInd Bank YEARS ON LIST: 2 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 2 INDUSTRY: BANKING SALES: $2.8 BIL MARKET CAP: $15.2 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: ROMESH SOBTI InterGlobe Aviation Ì INDUSTRY: TRANSPORTATION SALES: $2.8 BIL MARKET CAP: $7.2 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: KAPIL BHATIA Motherson Sumi Systems YEARS ON LIST: 5 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 5 INDUSTRY: AUTO PARTS SALES: $6.3 BIL MARKET CAP: $10.6 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: VIVEK CHAAND SEHGAL Rajesh Exports Ì INDUSTRY: GOLD JEWELRY SALES: $36.1 BIL MARKET CAP: $3.3 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: RAJESH MEHTA UPL Ì INDUSTRY: AGRICULTURAL CHEMICALS SALES: $2.4 BIL MARKET CAP: $6.8 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: RAJNIKANT SHROFF Yes Bank Ì INDUSTRY: BANKING SALES: $3.1 BIL MARKET CAP: $12.7 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: RANA KAPOOR INDONESIA PT Tiphone Mobile Indonesia Ì INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS SALES: $2.1 BIL MARKET CAP: $677 MIL TOP EXECUTIVE: TAN LIE PIN ÌNEW TO LIST 3RETURNEE SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 29 THE NEXT CENTURY SEPTEMBER 26 – 27, 2017 • HONG KONG This year marks a major milestone for Forbes – the 100th anniversary of its inaugural September 1917 issue. For 100 years, Forbes has been synonymous with success, good business, innovation, and integrity. In conjunction with Forbes’ centennial anniversary celebration, the 17th annual Forbes Global CEO Conference will take place in Hong Kong this September 26 to 27, under the theme ‘The Next Century’. The event will gather some of the world's top visionaries, CEOs, tycoons and investors to discuss and evaluate how far the global community has come, what needs to be done, and where it is going next. For more information please email info@forbesasia.com.sg or visit forbesglobalceoconference.com PRINCIPAL SPONSORS CORPORATE SPONSORS SUPPORTING SPONSORS SUPPORTING ORGANIZATION LIST OF CONFIRMED SPEAKERS AS OF AUGUST 16, 2017 Steve Forbes Carrie Lam Joseph C. Tsai Neil Shen Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, Forbes Media, USA The Chief Executive, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, People’s Republic of China Executive Vice Chairman, Alibaba Group, China Managing Partner, Sequoia Capital, China Vijay Shekhar Sharma Anthony Tan Jeongdo Hong Miwako Date Group CEO, Grab, Singapore President & CEO, JoongAng Ilbo and JMnet, President & CEO, JTBC, South Korea President & CEO, Mori Trust, Japan Mike Perlis Helman Sitohang CEO & Executive Chairman, Forbes Media, USA CEO Asia Pacific, Executive Board Member, Credit Suisse, Singapore Mario Moretti Polegato Chairman, GEOX Group, Italy Kathy Ireland Enrique K. Razon Jr. CEO & Chief Designer, Chairman & President, Kathy Ireland International Container Worldwide, USA Terminal Services, Inc, Philippines C. Dean Metropoulos Chairman & CEO, Metropoulos & Co., USA Dikembe Mutombo Adrian Cheng Chairman & President, Dikembe Mutombo Foundation, USA Founder, K11 and K11 Art Foundation, Executive Vice Chairman & GM, New World Development, Hong Kong Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala Antoine Blondeau Goodwin Gaw Tony Fernandes Ronnie C. Chan CEO, Paytm, India Chairman, Sentient, USA Managing Principal & Chairman, Gaw Capital Partners, Hong Kong Group CEO, AirAsia, Malaysia Chairman, Hang Lung Properties, Hong Kong Jane Jie Sun John Riady Panote Sirivadhanabhakdi CEO & Director, Executive Director, Ctrip.com International, Lippo Group, Managing China Partner, Venturra Capital, Indonesia Group CEO, Frasers Centrepoint, Singapore Chairman & CEO, Ayala Corporation, Philippines Abhishek Lodha Jonathan Tahir Lawrence Ho MD, Lodha Group, India Deputy Chairman, Mayapada Group, Indonesia Chairman & CEO, Melco Resorts & Entertainment, Hong Kong Divesh Makan Patrick Grove Moira Forbes Ho Kwon Ping Francis Yeoh Francine LeFrak Jean Eric Salata Sam Goi S D Shibulal CEO, ICONIQ Capital, USA Group CEO, Catcha Group, Malaysia Executive Vice President, Forbes Media, President & Publisher, ForbesWoman, USA Executive Chairman, Banyan Tree Holdings, Singapore MD, YTL Group of Companies, Malaysia Social Entrepreneur & Philanthropist, Founder, Same Sky, USA Chief Executive, Baring Private Equity Asia, Hong Kong Executive Chairman, Tee Yih Jia Group and GSH Corporation, Singapore Co-Founder, Infosys & Axilor Ventures, India Binod K. Chaudhary Beth A. BrookeMarciniak Chairman, CG Corp Global, Nepal Global Vice Chair, Public Policy, EY, USA Douglas Hsu David Hanson Rich Karlgaard V Shankar Jay Wintrob Yoshito Hori Tim Ferguson Chairman & CEO, Far Eastern Group, Taiwan CEO, Hanson Robotics, Hong Kong Editor-at-Large & Global Futurist, Forbes Media, USA CEO & Partner, Gateway Partners, UAE CEO, Oaktree Capital Management, USA President, GLOBIS University, Managing Partner, GLOBIS Capital Partners, Japan Editor, Forbes Asia, USA R SA SIA FO BE SK HYNIX A New Lease on Life N othing like a change of both name and ownership to reverse the fortunes of a company that was in trouble for years. Memory-chip manufacturer SK Hynix has seen its revenue and earnings climb dramatically since SK Group took over in early 2012, and this year it cracks the Fab 50 list for the first time. SK Hynix was born in 1983 as the Hyundai empire’s answer to Samsung Electronics. It went public in 1996, and Hyundai completely spun it off in 2001. By then its name was Hynix—from “Hy” in Hyundai and “nix” from “nics” in electronics. Over the next ten years it was in and out of financial trouble until SK Telecom, a pillar of the SK Group, bought a 20.5% stake from its creditor banks and added SK to its name. Today SK Hynix is South Korea’s second-biggest manufacturer of memory chips, but it’s well behind Samsung Electronics. Rising demand worldwide for memory chips, the only product the company makes, has boosted SK Hynix’s performance but so has the aggressive style of the company’s new management team. “The new SK Hynix is trying its best to narrow the gap with Samsung,” says Ahn Ki-Hyun, executive director of the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association, who was an engineer with Hynix as Hyundai was pulling out in 2001. “Old Hynix focused on manufacturing improvement. The new Hynix is focusing on R&D and technology for the D-RAM and emphasizing miniaturization of NAND flash memory.” Revenue is expected to hit $25.2 billion this year, 180% higher than in 2012. Much of the credit goes to Chief Chips and wafers: “The new Hynix is emphasizing miniaturization.” 32 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER, 2017 Executive Park Sung-Wook, who started as an engineer with the old Hynix, rose through the ranks, hung on during the transition to SK and now has been rolling out innovations, some developed at the company’s research and development center in San Jose, California. With nearly 30,000 workers at three manufacturing plants, two near Seoul and one in Wuxi, near Shanghai, SK Hynix sells 90% of its chips to foreign customers, mostly in the U.S. and China. Now SK Hynix is trying to take over part of Toshiba, which is No. 2 in NAND flash memory chips globally, behind Samsung, and fourth overall in chips, behind Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. By shedding its memory-chip unit, Toshiba hopes to cover huge losses from its Westinghouse nuclear-power subsidiary. But analysts are not keen on this move. James Rooney, chairman of Advanced Capital Partners in Hong Kong, cites SK Hynix’s “attempt to do a Toshiba deal” as evidence “they will somehow get drawn into circumstances that stretch their balance sheet or distract management’s focus.” This, he warns, “could bring on a new crisis during a cyclical market downturn.” Hank Morris, a financial analyst in Seoul, believes that SK was just plain lucky to pick up Hynix when it did. “SK was purchasing a going concern that was doing well despite the ups and downs of the memory-chip market,” he says. “Few groups in Korea would have the monetary assets to have bought control of Hynix. The government did not want it to go to Samsung because then Samsung would have too large a share of the D-RAM market and that would have caused the government problems.” —Donald Kirk The Fab 50 J A PA N India’s Missing IT Companies I dra (3). Even Satyam Computer Services cracked the list twice before it was felled by the largest fraud in Indian corporate history and sold to Tech Mahindra in 2009. In the past year, TCS—India’s largest IT company—saw 6% revenue growth to $18 billion while net profits also grew 6% to nearly $4 billion. Infosys, the second-largest, recorded a 4% rise in net profits. Wipro saw a 7% drop in net profits while Tech Mahindra experienced an 8.2% dip. HCL Tech performed the best—registering 13% growth both in revenue and net profits—but the showing wasn’t strong enough to return it to the list this year. “This period of lower revenue growth has been playing out over four years—the growth was 14% in fiscal 2014 and it’s 9% this year,” says Ashish Chopra, research analyst at Mumbai’s On hold: Economic trends and political factors have been a downer Motilal Oswal. “Cloud, for the technology sector, and workers have to reinvent themselves. digital and automation technologies are allowing clients to optiA strong rupee and weak IT spending in industries such as retail aren’t helping ei- mize their IT budgets for existing work. While companies are transitioning, no ther. Meanwhile, automation and digitizaIndian company of any might or scale has tion are eliminating jobs and changing job a disproportionately large share of revenue descriptions across the sector, leading to a from new technologies yet.” huge need for retraining. In fact, TCS, Infosys and Tech Mahindra India’s $154 billion IT industry—emall saw a net reduction in their workforces ploying 3.9 million people—expects lower for the quarter ended June 30. Analysts say export growth of 7% to 8% this year, this kind of shake-up is nothing new in the compared with 8.6% last year. Indian IT industry, which has battled currency companies rely heavily on the U.S. market, fluctuations and shrinking IT budgets in the but growth there has slowed. Banking and past. But the magnitude is worrisome. IT financial services, big contributors to IT industry body Nasscom projects that in three industry revenue, have seen tepid growth. years nearly a third of the workforce will be So for the first time it’s a no-show this irrelevant and at least half of the remainder year for India’s top five. They’ve each made will need to be retrained. It’s working to the list multiple times: Tata Consultancy retrain workers with the help of its member Services (8 years), Infosys (6), HCL Techcompanies. —Anuradha Raghunathan nologies (6) Wipro (5), and Tech Mahin- DAVID PEARSON / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO ndian information-technology companies have been a mainstay of the Fab 50 since we began the list in 2005—until this year. Some continue to churn out good results, but not one of them is performing well enough to make the list this time. That’s a reflection of the turmoil in the sector, which is roiled by economic and political factors ranging from tighter rules for work permits in the U.S., Singapore, Australia and New Zealand to the planned exit of the U.K. from the European Union. CyberAgent YEARS ON LIST: 2 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 2 INDUSTRY: INTERNET SERVICES SALES: $2.8 BIL MARKET CAP: $4.1 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: SUSUMU FUJITA Mixi Ì INDUSTRY: MOBILE GAMING SALES: $1.9 BIL MARKET CAP: $4.1 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: KENJI KASAHARA Nippon Paint YEARS ON LIST: 2 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 2 INDUSTRY: PAINT MANUFACTURING SALES: $5.8 BIL MARKET CAP: $12.1 BIL TOP EXECUTIVES: TETSUSHI TADOH, KENJI SAKAI S O U T H KO R E A Naver YEARS ON LIST: 8 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 2 INDUSTRY: INTERNET SERVICES SALES: $3.5 BIL MARKET CAP: $19.7 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: HAN SEONG-SOOK SK Hynix Ì INDUSTRY: SEMICONDUCTORS SALES: $14.8 BIL MARKET CAP: $40.3 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: PARK SUNG-WOOK M A L AY S I A Batu Kawan YEARS ON LIST: 3 CONSECUTIVE YEARS: 3 INDUSTRY: CHEMICALS SALES: $4.1 BIL MARKET CAP: $1.8 BIL TOP EXECUTIVES: LEE OI HIAN, LEE HAU HIAN TA I WA N Catcher Technology 3 YEARS ON LIST: 2 INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY EQUIPMENT SALES: $2.5 BIL MARKET CAP: $9.4 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: ALLEN HORNG MediaTek 3 YEARS ON LIST: 5 INDUSTRY: SEMICONDUCTORS SALES: $8.5 BIL MARKET CAP: $14.1 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: MING-KAI TSAI VIETNAM Mobile World Investment Ì INDUSTRY: ELECTRONICS & APPLIANCES RETAILING SALES: $2 BIL MARKET CAP: $1.5 BIL TOP EXECUTIVE: NGUYEN DUC TAI ÌNEW TO LIST 3RETURNEE SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 33 R B SIA FO JACK MA: TYCOON AT THE CENTER A ES E-COMMERCE/ RETAIL Taobao Tmall Alibaba.com Alimama 1688.com AliExpress Lazada OneTouch Intime Retail PHARMACEUTICALS Alibaba Health1 The World of Alibaba The Hangzhou online giant is on an acquisition binge that has seen its tentacles stretch to virtually every corner of the Chinese economy and beyond. RESEARCH BY JANE HO 1H.K.-LISTED COMPANY, 46% OWNED BY ALIBABA AND 14% OWNED BY YUNFENG, A PRIVATE EQUITY FIRM COFOUNDED BY MA. NOTE: THE COMPANIES LISTED IN THE GRAPHIC ARE ALL MAJORITY-OWNED. SOURCES: ALIBABA; STOCK EXCHANGE FILINGS; COMPANY WEBSITES. 34 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 FINANCE Ant Financial ALIPAY YU’EBAO MYBANK SITTING PRETTY Jack Ma’s empire keeps growing and is now worth nearly $400 billion. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Alibaba Cloud DingTalk YunOS AutoNavi Investments and Minority stakes E-COMMERCE/RETAIL Suning One97 Communications Paytm Mall Baozun FINANCE Hundsun Technologies LOGISTICS/DELIVERY SERVICES Cainiao Network Qingdao Goodaymart Logistics SingPost YTO Ele.me MEDIA/ENTERTAINMENT Alibaba Pictures China Media Capital Enlight Media Weibo Huayi Brothers TOURISM Fliggy (formerly Alitrip) MEDIA/ ENTERTAINMENT Youku Tudou UCWeb AliGames Damai South China Morning Post Publishers INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Shiji Information OTHERS AGTech Magic Leap Koubei Meizu Haier Electronics Group SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 35 DARIO PIGNATELLI/BLOOMBERG: ILLUSTRATIONS BY PETER AND MARIA HOEY FOR FORBES TRANSPORTATION Didi R SA SIA FO BE THESE COMPANIES ARE DEBUTING THIS YEAR AFTER MAKING THEIR MARK IN SECTORS RANGING FROM E-COMMERCE TO SOY SAUCE PRODUCTION. CHEUNG KONG PROPERTY HOLDINGS HONG KONG The Li Ka-shing-chaired property developer is one of the largest in Hong Kong, developing one in seven private residences in the city. It also develops commercial and industrial property at home as well as across mainland China, Singapore, the U.K. and the Bahamas. In 2008, CK Hutchison Holdings made the Fab 50 before a corporate reshuffle led to the current company. COGOBUY GROUP CHINA Graduating from last year’s Waiting in the Wings list, Cogobuy is the largest e-commerce FOSHAN HAITIAN FLAVOURING & FOOD CHINA Producer and seller of soy sauce is the biggest player in terms of revenue in the Chinese condiment industry. Moving up from last year’s Waiting in the Wings, the 22-year-old company is diversifying its product line. Though soy sauce still counts INTERGLOBE AVIATION INDIA The Gurgaon company operates India’s largest passenger airline, IndiGo, which is one of the largest low-cost carriers in the world. Boasting a market share of more than 40%, the 11-yearold airline, which serves 46 destinations—39 domestic and 7 international—has been profitable since fiscal 2009. The air carrier expects capacity to grow by 20% each year for the next three years. Revenue rose 13% on the back of a 31.5% growth in passenger volume over the past year. Cofounders Rahul Bhatia and Rakesh Gangwal are regulars on Forbes’ rich lists—Bhatia on the India 100 and Gangwal on the U.S. Forbes 400 roster. IndiGo has recently expressed an interest in buying state-run, debt-laden Air India’s international and low-cost units. 36 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 for 61% of its revenue last year, oyster sauce, bean paste and chicken essence are on the rise. The company also sponsors five popular TV shows. Harvard Business School turned the most famous one, If You Are the One, a 90-minute Chinese dating-game show, into a case study in 2014, the year Foshan Haitian went public. MIXI JAPAN Started as a social-networking service in 1999 by Kenji Kasahara, the company boasted 14 million monthly active users by 2012. However, with the rise of Facebook and the emergence of Mixi tsukare (“tired of Mixi”), the Tokyo king of social networking started experiencing a sharp downturn in 2011. The stock price fell to less than 10% of its historic high in 2008. Kasahara took the user data and developed other services such as e-commerce, dating and apartment-hunting, but nothing worked. In September 2013, an iOS-based mobile game it developed, Monster Strike, saved the company. The stock went up 191% in 2014, and Kasahara returned to our list of Japan’s 50 Richest in 2015 after an absence of four years. In the last fiscal year, 93% of Mixi’s revenue came from its mobile game segment. MOBILE WORLD INVESTMENT VIETNAM The Ho Chi Minh City company sells mobile phones and electronic devices. Founded in 2004, the company has maintained an annual revenue growth rate of more than 60% since its IPO in 2014. With 1,527 stores in all 63 cities in Vietnam, it also has a store in Cambodia and plans to expand to Laos and Myanmar. The company also has established online marketplaces: Thegiodidong.com (“mobile world”) sells phones and laptops, while Dienmay.com (“consumer electronics”) distributes TVs, refrigerators and karaoke machines. Last month, Mobile World became the official distributor of the first Vietnam-made high-end smartphone, the newly launched $440 BPhone. RAJESH EXPORTS INDIA The world’s largest gold company, which is into everything from mining and refining to REUTERS/AMIT DAVE New to the Class marketplace serving China’s electronicsmanufacturing industry. It sells electronic hardware to small and medium-size companies. Founded in 2010 in Shenzhen and listed in Hong Kong in 2014, it managed 6,000% revenue growth in five years. Chairman and Chief Executive Jeffrey Kang, 47, owns 47% of the company, making him a billionaire. In 2014 the company started a subsidiary—IngDan (“Hard Egg”), an online system that matches up intelligent-hardware startups with crowdfunding platforms such as Taobao and JD.com. IngDan also relies on Cogobuy’s customers to supply startups with the hardware they need to turn ideas into products. In July, Cogobuy, together with three other Fab 50 companies—Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent—joined China’s first industry technology alliance to break into the booming artificial intelligence industry. VIPSHOP HOLDINGS CHINA Three years after getting notice on the Waiting in the Wings list, the company steps up to the Fab 50. Founder and Chairman Ya “Eric” Shen is a billionaire now. Started in 2008 and listed in 2012, the Guangzhou online retailer is the fastest-growing e-commerce company in China and the thirdbiggest, after JD.com and Taobao. The company pioneered selling deeply discounted products in China from big brands, while putting out slogans such as “100% real product” to combat discount retailing’s reputation as being rife with counterfeits. Revenue grew 33% this past year. wholesaling and retailing, has seen its revenue jump sevenfold in five years. Started by brothers Rajesh and Prashant Mehta in 1989, it has refineries in Switzerland and India. It also runs a retail chain under the name Shubh Jewellers. It plans to expand from the current 80 stores to around 500 in three years. About a third of sales comes from Europe and a fifth from the U.S. It manufactures bullion bars for leading brands across the world. Rajesh is chairman and appears regularly on our list of India’s 100 Richest. prepurchases and predelivers goods to geographic areas based on predictions of the purchasing needs there. With 36 planes, 15,000 trucks and more than 120,000 employees, S.F. Express can deliver fresh fruit and, especially in the fall, crabs. S.F. HOLDING WAITING IN THE WINGS IMAGINECHINA CHINA A backdoor listing allowed Shenzhen delivery company S.F. Express to go public in December by buying out a chemical company and changing the name to S.F. Holding. Founded in 1993 by Wang Wei, then a deliverer himself, S.F. is now the biggest delivery company in China. Wang has become the fourth-richest man in China. In 2015, S.F. Express, with four other delivery companies, invested $75 million and developed Feng Chao Technology, a logistics data network, to analyze user data, predict user needs and achieve faster deliveries. The company’s recent strategy “Community O2O” features Hive Box, which UPL INDIA The crop-protection company, which makes seeds, pesticides, insecticides and after- harvest products, debuts on the list after a 79% leap in profits over the past year. Profits were buoyed by cost-cutting, the company’s expanded manufacturing facilities around the globe and a diversified product mix. It has 33 manufacturing plants across India, France, the Netherlands, Colombia and Brazil. It exports to more than 130 countries and caters to a variety of crops. The 48-year-old Mumbai company saw a 39% uptick in its stock in the past year. THESE RISING HIGH PERFORMERS MAY SOON APPEAR ON THE FAB 50. COMPANY COUNTRY BUSINESS ANHUI SHANYING PAPER INDUSTRY CHINA PAPER & PULP BEIJING ORIENTAL YUHONG WATERPROOF TECH CHINA PAINTING MATERIALS CSPC PHARMACEUTICAL CHINA PHARMACEUTICALS GEMDALE PROPERTIES HONG KONG PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT KANGDE XIN COMPOSITE MATERIAL CHINA PLASTIC PRODUCTS NEW ORIENTAL EDUCATION CHINA EDUCATION SERVICES OUTSOURCING INC. JAPAN RECRUITING SERVICES POWERLONG REAL ESTATE CHINA PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT PRIMAX ELECTRONICS TAIWAN TECHNOLOGY EQUIPMENT SHANGHAI LA CHAPELLE FASHION CHINA FASHION RETAIL TAL EDUCATION CHINA EDUCATION SERVICES TVS MOTOR INDIA MOTOR VEHICLES YUNDA HOLDING CHINA COURIER SERVICES SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 37 FORBES ASIA FORBES@100 As Forbes’ centennial approaches, we’re unearthing our favorite covers. July 1, 1968: Houston, We’ve Got Your Back A LITTLE MORE than a year before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, the outlook for America’s space program was almost as bleak as the lunar surface itself. Three astronauts had been burned alive in the Apollo 1 disaster the previous January. Public support was waning. And the federal government had pared NASA’s budget to approximately $4 billion (some $28 billion in current terms), roughly a 12% decline from its 1966 high. Forbes vociferously advocated that America continue to pursue the final frontier: “To abandon space exploration, to ignore it, to sneer at it is to do a disservice to the long-range health of the American economy. . . . The smart company does not cut its R&D just because it is having a bad year.” Technology developed for space had already led to new commercial opportunities. Recently launched satellites, for example, had boosted the transatlantic telephone system’s capacity by 50%, and refined aluminum alloys could carry a 50% to 60% greater structural load than similar materials produced a decade earlier. THE EDITOR’S DESK In contrast to today’s deep partisan divide over gun control, both Democrats and Republicans (such as Malcolm Forbes) supported it in 1968 following the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. Wrote Forbes: “Being required to register firearms and show the competence . . . to handle them hardly seems unreasonable . . . [or] an infringement of freedom.” NOTABLE AND NEWSWORTHY Finance in the Outfield The Boston Red Sox’s Carl Yastrzemski had distinguished himself as Fenway Park’s foremost star, capturing the 1967 Triple Crown while leading the club to the World Series. Outside the ballpark, the left fielder nurtured a passion for investing (“I’ve always been interested in stocks. I tried public relations, and I didn’t like it. I read everything I could . . . about finance, and I liked it”) and worked as a front man for a mutual-fund business that is today’s Eaton & Vance. 38 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 AMAZING AD Skyrockets’ Earthly Use Dana Corp. was adapting the turbine it made for the space program for use in such terrestrial vehicles as cars, trucks and trains. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; DONALD UHRBROCK/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; BILL EPPRIDGE/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; LOUIS REQUENA/MLB PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES BY ABRAM BROWN SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION SINGAPORE: PREPARING FOR A CHANGING WORLD It’s stable government and innovative outlook position the country to remain the destination of choice for investors and businesses. Singapore Skyline Almost 10 years after the onset of the great financial crisis, the global economy remains in a volatile state. On paper, the numbers look promising. The U.S. economy is humming, with stock markets at all-time highs. Closer to home, Singapore’s economy grew by a respectable 2.5% in the second quarter from a year ago, the same pace as the previous quarter, according to advance estimates released by the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Yet, the road ahead is paved with much uncertainty. In the past year, major economies such as the U.K. and U.S. appear to have adopted a more protectionist stance, as seen by the Brexit vote and of Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential elections. Tensions in the South China Sea and concerns over North Korea also threaten to derail growth. Meanwhile, new technologies are disrupting businesses at an unprecedented rate, as bold start-ups take on incumbents in financial services, manufacturing and retail, among other sectors. Yet, experts believe that Singapore can weather the storm and reinforce its position as one of the world’s global cities, able to attract investments and multinationals from “The Asia of the future is much bigger than China, and Singapore will benefit from these subregions.” – - PARAG KHANNA, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW IN THE CENTRE ON ASIA AND GLOBALISATION around the world. Between its stable political system, educated workforce and drive for innovation, Singapore has the tools it needs to overcome the challenges it faces. You can find evidence of this in the following pages, as we highlight global companies, such as the Intercontinental Hotel Group, expanding their presence here. Homegrown firms also benefit from using Singapore as a base for global operations. The Ascott Limited, for example, runs a network of serviced residences comprised of more than 40,000 units in key cities in the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East. Supporting the efforts of Singaporebased enterprises are government agencies such as the Economic Development Board, which help with funding, talent development and opening doors in overseas markets. The ongoing integration of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Singapore’s role as a gateway to the region also bode well for the country’s economic future, as does its close ties with emerging economic giants such as India. “The Asia of the future is much bigger than China, and Singapore will benefit from these subregions,” says Parag Khanna, a senior research fellow in the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. Leveraging these advantages, Singapore is in the midst of transforming its economy to manage the trials ahead to remain a premier destination for investors and businesses. This is still very much a work in progress, and will take years to complete. But if the city-state takes on these challenges with the same vigor and inventiveness as it has in the past, there is much reason to be optimistic about its continued prosperity. Singapore 1 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION Singapore Economic Development Board: SHAPING NEW POSSIBILITIES FOR SINGAPORE AND THE WORLD Singapore’s long-term commitment to innovation, successful partnerships with businesses and well-educated workforce ensure the country is well placed to navigate the challenges ahead and thrive. Marina Bay Sands Singapore has moved from third world to first in less than half a century. Along the way, it has earned a reputation as an innovative global city at the heart of Asia that has thrived despite its many constraints. Yet, the city-state, which celebrated its 50th year of independence in 2015, cannot take it s current prosperit y for granted. Beset by tec hnologic al disruption and geopolitical uncertainty, the world is changing rapidly. A small countr y with no natural resources, Singapore has depended heavily on unfettered trade and healthy relations with the rest of the world to f u e l i t s g ro w t h. B u t w i t h s ig n s t ha t countries are developing a more protectionist stance, as well as greater asser tiveness from global powers and i n t e n s i f y i n g c o m p e t i t i o n, t h e r o a d ahead may be a rocky one. That said, Singapore has shown it s abilit y to innovate in the f ace of challenges time and again, whether it was building an industrial base from scratch, developing one of the world’s best airpor t s or establishing a more self-sufficient water supply. To thrive in 2 Singapore a fast-evolving landscape, the nation will need to continue to innovate with a purpose by turning possibilities, fueled by passion, into reality. As part of this effort, the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) and Singa pore Tourism Board (S TB) h a v e l a u n c h e d a n e w u n i f i e d “S G” brand for both business and tourism. The brand will signal to the world the count r y ’s relentle s s commit ment to innovation. On a business front, it also reflects what Singapore has done and will continue to do: par tnering global businesses on journeys to create new solutions and innovations with a positive impact on the world. Singapore is a city of possibilities, driven by a passionate workforce striving to succeed. The long-term vision for the country is to remain the preferred choice for inter national companies seeking to expand their business in Asia and beyond. Panasonic: Connecting to Regional Customers As a regional business hub wellconnec ted to the region, Singapore is an ideal location for Japanese elec tronic s giant Panasonic to house some of its headquarter functions. For instance, the group recently relocated its Refrigeration Compressor Business Unit (RCBU) headquar ters to the cit ystate to be closer to its customers and better understand their needs. The RCBU headquar ter s will bring together busines s func tions such as Panasonic HQ SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION “We are growing beyond being just a manufacturer— we want to be the leading refrigeration compressor company and brand globally.” – - JAKE HIROSE, DIRECTOR, PANASONIC ASIA PACIFIC research and development, sales and marketing, human resources and corporate planning as well as manufacturing innovation and procurement. “The proximity to the market allows for swift management decision-making and adds value for our customers. We are always listening to our customers and this is one of the key drivers behind our s t r ategic reloc ation of RCBU to Singapore,” says Jake Hirose, director of Panasonic Asia Pacific. “We recognize the demand grow th in this market and we want to be at the front line, not only to bet ter deliver but also to be closer to the market to further understand our customers’ evolving needs,” he says. “We are growing beyond being jus t a manufac turer— we want to be the leading refrigeration compressor company and brand globally.” Panasonic has not only established itself as one of the major players in the consumer-elec tronics sec tor in Singapore, but also in B2B businesses such as health care, avionic s, semiconductor, vertical farming and invertor compressor manufacturing. It also has a wholly owned research and development arm based in Singapore, which contributes to Panasonic’s global R&D in areas such as ar tificial intelligence technolog y, B2B cloud solutions and intellec tual property services. I n S in g a p o re, Pa n a s o n ic h a s al s o benefited from policies that encourage talent development. This has become especially impor tant as the company incorporates more cutting-edge technologies into its operations. Panasonic Appliances Refrigeration Devices Singapore, for example, is transitioning to a “smart” factory that uses automated solutions and robotic s. A s such, the company is looking to recruit and train system engineers capable of operating advanced equipment. “With this in view, Panasonic is committed to working with Singaporeans to increase their skill sets and build deep capabilities,” says Hirose. He adds that the presence of the RCBU Global R&D Centre in Singapore offers local employees a chance to take up leadership roles and drive innovative change in the region. Pepperl+Fuchs: Powering Industry 4.0 One of the leading players in the new industrial revolution, German company Pepperl+Fuchs, is a pioneer and innovator of industrial sensors for fac tor y automation and an expert for explosion protection in process automation. It s Singapore of fice ac t s as the h ea d q ua r te r s fo r S o u t h ea s t A sia i n manufac turing and for Asia Pacific for sale s. W ith about 1,0 0 0 employee s, Pepperl+Fuchs Singapore 3 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION the Singapore of fice suppor t s it s manufacturing operations in Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam. Pepperl+Fuchs first came to Singapore in 1979, attracted by its well-educated and English-speaking workforce, stable political system and the rule of law. These attributes have become even more relevant as the company navigates challenges brought about by the move toward advanced automation and connec tivit y in manufac turing, which has been dubbed Industry 4.0. To showcase it s ex per tise in automation, the company recently set up a US$65 million global distribution center in Singapore that features an advanced automated retrieval system and a direct connection between the warehouse and production facility. “Industry 4.0 has brought about a lot of new challenges. Singapore’s good education system supports companies in this area by providing them with the necessar y skills,” says Pepperl+Fuchs Asia’s managing director, Juergen Seitz. Together with the EDB, Pepperl+Fuchs offers a program for students from the polytechnics and the Singapore Institute o f Te c h n o l o g y t h e c h a n c e t o g a i n experience working at the company. “The program allows students to adapt to a working environment, and allows us “Industry 4.0 has brought about a lot of new challenges. Singapore’s good education system supports companies in this area by providing them with the necessary skills.” – - JUERGEN SEITZ, MANAGING DIRECTOR, PEPPERL+FUCHS ASIA to get to know them better in order to get an idea of which area they may be better suited to,” says Seitz. The company also conducts R&D together with universities here in areas such as 3D printing and new production processes, he adds. Beyond talent development, Pepperl+Fuchs has also benefited from Singapore’s connectivity to the rest of Asia, and the suppor t it has received from government agencies in opening doors to potential partnerships. Pepperl+Fuchs 4 Singapore “Singapore is not only well connected to America and Europe but also to Asia, and the EDB has been a big help in connecting us with partners,” says Seitz. PBA Group: Reinventing for Success From trading mechanical and automation p ro d u c t s to n o w m a n u f a c t u r i n g i t s own components using advanced manufac turing, homegrown firm PBA Group is constantly reinventing itself to keep up with the changes that impact its business. Today, PBA designs and manufactures high performance mechanical precision components as well as automation and motion control components. “Rather than just assemble components for customers, we felt that we could build our own intellectual property for the components, which enable us to give customers a complete solution,” says PBA Group Chief Executive Officer Derrick Yap. A par t from being it s headquar ters, Singapore acts as a test bed for PBA’s new products, which it manufactures in small batches here before rolling it out to the rest of the region. “The think tank of the company is in Singapore. We do R&D here and small batc h prod uc tion of new prod uc t s. Once the produc tion is stabilized, we roll out to our markets overseas,” says Yap. Outside of Singapore, the company has operations in eight other countries, including Malaysia, China, Taiwan and the Philippines. Beyond new product development, PBA also develops prototypes of new business SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION “The think tank of the company is in Singapore. We do R&D here and small batch production of new products. Once the production is stabilized, we roll out to our markets overseas.” – - DERRICK YAP, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, PBA GROUP models in Singapore, and has recently unveiled several exciting new initiatives. These include the Robotics Application Centre of Excellence (RACE), a training center to groom robotics engineers and help drive the growth of advanced manufacturing here. Its courses are designed for policymakers, business owners, educators and professional practitioners. It has also set up an incubator to invest in companies that are developing technologies of interest to PBA, and potentially drive new businesses. “By working with start-ups, it exposes our engineers to new technologies that we can potentially internalize and benefit from,” Yap says. ASEAN’s efforts to integrate its members’ economies will be a key driver of grow th going for ward, he adds. The ASE AN Economic Communit y (AEC), launched in 2015, aims to create a single market across the bloc that is the equivalent of the world’s seventh-largest economy. Beyond ASEAN, Singapore is also well connected to India, which is rising as an economic powerhouse to rival China’s success. “The Asia of the future is much bigger than China, and Singapore will benefit from these subregions. It is no secret that cities as far away as Dubai see Singapore as a role model,” says Khanna. Meanwhile, Singapore’s highly diversified economy will ac t as a bulwark against technological disruption and rising competition. “Small countries tend to have simple economic structure. For a small country, Singapore is by far the most diversified economy in the world; there is not even a second place,” Khanna says. “Whether it’s petrochemical refineries or finance, there are ver y few sec tors that Singapore is not involved in and employing people.” However, he notes the government needs to continue to train the workforce to handle higher value-added jobs as this disruption transforms the economy. Singapore’s education system will play a big role in this effort, in particular the collaboration bet ween indus tr y and academia, to ensure that graduates are equipped with skills that are relevant. “The government looks at what MNCs [multinational corporations] are coming in, which Singapore companies are growing and what skills are needed, and whether the schools are providing them,” says Khanna. “If there is a corporate investment in a certain area, such as Lucasfilm coming in for digital animation, you will suddenly find that the polytechnics will offer robust programs in that area to train a talented pool to support those ventures,” he adds. With its world-class English-language tertiary institutions, Khanna proposes that education itself could be a moneymaking sector for Singapore. “If you increase the space in major universities you have the ability to attract top English-speaking students from middle-class families from China and the rest of Asia,” he says. Singapore: An Asian City of the Future Despite facing a fast-changing global landscape and intensifying competition in the region, Singapore is well placed to weather challenges and maintain its position as one of the world’s premier cities for busines s and finance, says Parag Khanna, a senior research fellow in the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. In par ticular, the countr y is benefiting from its position as a gateway to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a dynamic region that is seeing healthy growth. More foreign investment is flowing into ASEAN as manufacturers look for opportunities in Southeast Asia as operating costs in China escalate. “ASEAN is one of the pillars of the global economy,” Khanna says. “The Asia of the future is much bigger than China, and Singapore will benefit from these subregions. It is no secret that cities as far away as Dubai see Singapore as a role model.” – - PARAG KHANNA, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW, CENTRE ON ASIA AND GLOBALISATION Singapore 5 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION InterContinental Hotels Group: BUILDING LONG-TERM SUCCESS The group continues to expand its presence in Asia and beyond through its portfolio of well-recognized hotel brands and its network of trusted partners. InterContinental Singapore Robertson Quay With the continued rise of travel and tourism globally and especially in Asia, the hospitality industry has become an increasingly signficant sector, helping power economic growth in many countries. O n e of t h e w o r l d ’s l ea d i ng h ote l c o m pa n i e s I n te r C o n t i n e n t a l H o te l s Group (IHG) sees increased opportunity in this global trend and is pioneering new concepts throughout the region, bringing new brands to new markets. Today IHG has more than 5,220 hotels in nearly 100 countries and territories. With its expansive brand por t folio — which include international luxury brand InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, boutique concepts Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, Hotel Indigo, business brand Crowne Plaza and the mid priced Holiday Inn Brand family—the group can offer travellers the perfect hotel to meet every need. IHG’s track record speaks for itself. Partners who have worked with the group 6 Singapore continue to deepen their relationships by embarking on new ventures across the region. Pro-Invest Group, for example, saw the opportunity to bring the Holiday Inn Express brand to Australia and worked with IHG to launch the hotel brand there in 2015. Following this succes s, Pro -Inves t Group and IHG are developing a portfolio of 10 to 15 EVEN Hotels. This was cemented earlier this year with the first signing in New Zealand, its first debut outside North America. The wellness lifestyle brand features nutritionally designed menus and state-of-the-art fitness facilities. EVEN Hotel Auckland SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION KIMPTON De Witt Amsterdam says Ronald Barrot t, chief executive officer of Pro-Invest. “...We are confident its modern luxury design and positioning will be a strong draw for sophisticated business and leisure travellers to Singapore....” – - KISHIN RK, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, RB CAPITAL Likewise, Singapore’s RB Capital started its journey with IHG with the launch of the Holiday Inn Express Singapore Clarke Quay in 2014. Keen to tap on the growing luxury market, RB Capital entered into another agreement with IHG to manage InterContinental Singapore Robertson Quay, which is slated to open shortly. “The new InterContinental Singapore Ro ber t son Q uay w ill be an exc iting addition to Singapore’s luxur y hotel landscape and is the crown jewel of our Robertson Quay rejuvenation project. We are confident its modern luxury design and positioning will be a strong draw for sophisticated business and leisure travellers to Singapore. We are delighted to partner with IHG again,” says Kishin RK, chief executive of RB Capital. Adds Jan Smits, IHG chief executive, Asia, Middle East and Africa: “RB Capital is already a partner of IHG’s and the company has an established reputation as a leading property development company. So growing our presence in Singapore together is a great opportunity for us both and we look forward to working with them to open the doors of this exciting property.” A Partnership Based on Trust Trust is at the hear t of any successful relationship, and it is no different with IHG and its owner par tners. When an owner invests in a hotel or resort, IHG will be there to help them grow the value of their asset by ensuring it is properly managed, a promise the group gives to all of its partners. IHG’s teams work closely with owners to provide a seamless experience through the design, build, opening phase and beyond. An example of this seamless journey is with the recent opening of Hotel Indigo Bali Seminyak Beach, the first Hotel Indigo in a resort location. The design follows the Hotel Indigo ethos of reflecting the local neighborhood. The new 289-room hotel gracing Seminyak’s Mesari Beach draws inspiration from the flavors, culture and character of its surrounding community, the vibrant and lively Seminyak district. IHG of fers investors a unique value p ro p o si t io n. T h e g ro u p’s p refe r re d brands are known worldwide and give a hotel immediate brand recognition. Joining the wider IHG family also gives partners access to the group’s global scale and strong revenue deliver y systems, which are designed to maximize performance by generating, conver ting and retaining demand for its rooms. With a presence in nearly 100 countries and a strong pipeline of hotels scheduled to open around the world, there is a wealth of oppor tunities for investors looking to become an owner of an IHGbranded property. The group’s journey so far would not be possible without its network of hotel owners, and IHG aims to continue to create solid, forward-looking relationships with trusted partners around the world. Hotel Indigo Bali Seminyak Beach Singapore 7 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION The Ascott Limited: A GLOBAL LEADER IN SERVICED RESIDENCES Whether you are looking for a premium accommodation experience or seeking the familiar comforts of home, The Ascott Limited’s portfolio of award-winning brands is designed to satisfy the varied needs of business and leisure travellers from around the world. As one of the leading international serviced residence owner-operators, A scot t’s promise of quality accommodation and premier service is backed by a track record of more than 30 years in the hospitality business that has seen it win numerous awards and accolades. The group’s network of serviced residences comprises of more than 43,000 units in key cities in the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. With another 26,000 units under development, Ascott will eventually have more than 70,000 units across more than 120 cities. These apartments cater to both extended-stay travellers as well as those seeking shorter stays. The company’s brands include Ascott, Citadines, Somerset, Quest, The Crest Collection and lyf. Ascott The Residence At Ascot t The Residence, there is no holding back when it comes to lavishing guests with plush, prestige pampering. Located in prime districts across the Asia Pacific and the Middle East, travellers will be able to mix business with leisure in refined surroundings and enjoy unparalleled personal service. Citadines Apart’hotel For those seeking a more authentic experience, Citadines Apart’hotel offers guests Ascott Marunouchi Tokyo the chance to live like a local in the heart of a bustling metropolis. Enjoy a dynamic stay while indulging in all the comforts and business connectivity of a modern serviced apartment. Somerset Serviced Residence Somerset Serviced Residence welcomes you with homely warmth that combines comfort, convenience and cultural charms. Amid a stylish setting, choose to feel the pulse of the city, or retreat to a more tranquil space for a private experience. Quest Apartment Hotels Be it business trip or vacation, Quest Apar tment Hotels provides spacious serviced apartment style hotel rooms that are ideal for short or long stays. Quest Apartment Hotels has a strong presence in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, with properties located in central business districts, suburban and regional areas close to head offices, business centers and key tourist destinations. The Crest Collection The Crest Collection was created with the luxury jetsetter in mind. This handpicked selection of elegantly designed serviced residences celebrates modernit y and premium comfort, offering both contemporary design and European-style grandeur. lyf Designed and managed by millennials, lyf (pronounced “life”) is a co-living concept that connec t s like-minded travellers through a fresh take on community living and working. Guests can bond in an array of social spaces and experience a new way of community living. Citadines Michel Hamburg 8 Singapore For more information, visit the-ascott.com or call +65 6272 7272. SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION SINGAPORE: CHARTING A NEW COURSE ONCE AGAIN Singapore maps out plan for the future to deal with challenges at home and abroad while supporting the next generation’s global champions. Singapore skyline after dark Singapore has never shied away from taking bold risks to tackle its economic challenges. A s a newly independent nation, it pur sued a then-innovative strategy of at trac ting multinationals to set up shop in the city-state. When low-cost competitors chipped away at its electronics-manufacturing sector in the 1990s, it diversified by making a big, and ultimately successful, bet on the biomedical industry. Now in the face of technological disruption and intensifying competition from its regional neighbours, Singapore finds itself once again having to blaze a new trail to ensure its continued prosperity. In Februar y, a high-powered group made up of captains of industry and government ministers presented a proposed blue print for managing Singapore’s economy over the long term. The recommendations of the aptly named Committee on the Future Economy (CFE) aims to help Singapore develop a vibrant and resilient economy that can grow in a sustainable manner. A mong other presc riptions, these included deepening international connections, acquiring deep skills, strengthening enterprise capabilities and building strong digital capabilities. 10 Singapore “To navigate succes s fully into the future, Singapore must continue to build on the strong foundation of its people, institutions, as well as good rule of law, trust and assurance of high level of service and quality. At the same time, businesses must be nimble and innovative and be pioneers in their own right,” said Teo Siong Seng, chairman of the Singapore Business Federation and a member of the CFE, when the committee’s report was released. While the broad strategy has been laid out, its execution might prove difficult as companies attempt to transform themselves as they deal with challenges at home and abroad. The support given to businesses by Singapore’s government agencies and industry bodies will be key to the transformation effort. For instance, an initiative where trade associations and chambers help local companies enhance their capabilities has seen good progress in the past year. Managed by government agencies, the Local Enterprise and Association Development Programme saw 23 associations support more than 8,300 small and midsize businesses in their efforts to build stronger capabilities and create new growth opportunities since May 2016. Fostering entrepreneurship among Singaporeans is another key plank of the strategy. Singapore recently over took Silicon Valley as world’s No. 1 for start-up talent, according to a report by Startup Genome, a U.S.- based organization, released earlier this year. The end goal is to produce a handful of global champions who can hold their own against the Googles and Facebooks of the world. Promising contenders have emerged, and efforts to support local firms that have the potential to thrive on the global stage are ongoing. Given the uncertain global outlook, the next few years are likely to bring rapid and unpredictable change to Singapore. But with its well-known emphasis on longterm planning, the city-state already has a plan to deal with the challenges ahead. WEB DIRECTORY INTERCONTINENTAL HOTELS GROUP www.ihgplc.com SINGAPORE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT BOARD www.edb.gov.sg THE ASCOTT LIMITED www.the-ascott.com FORBES ASIA LISTS Booking It BY HAYLEY CUCCINELLO, NATALIE ROBEHMED AND MICHELA TINDERA COLLECTION CHRISTOPHEL/ALAMY; SPLASH NEWS/NEWSCOM;JOHN SCIULLI/GETTY IMAGES; ROBIN MARCHANT/GETTY IMAGES; SETH WENIG/AP; LOU ROCCO/ABC VIA GETTY IMAGES; TAYLOR HILL/GETTY IMAGES; MIKE COPPOLA/GETTY IMAGES; BEN A. PRUCHNIE/GETTY IMAGES; JASON MERRITT/GETTY IMAGES; STEFANIE KEENAN/GETTY IMAGES; NEWSCOM DO YOU BELIEVE in magic? For the first time in nearly a decade, J.K. Rowling (see “Magically Everlasting” at right) tops Forbes’ ranking of the highest-earning wordsmiths, displacing the freakishly prolific James Patterson. Fans of the printed (or digital) word will be cheered to know that although five writers on our list had novels made into movies this past year, they nonetheless earned the bulk of their bucks from their books. Together these 11 writers sold nearly 30 million volumes in the United States over the past 12 months, logging $312.5 million in pretax income. We close the covers—for now, at least—on a couple of scribes who fell off the list this year: Game of Thrones’ George R.R. Martin and The Fault in Our Stars’ John Green. Both will likely return; Martin has four Thrones prequels in the works, and Green is publishing Turtles All the Way Down, his first novel in five years, this October. THE WORLD’S HIGHESTPAID AUTHORS 6 1 MAGICALLY EVERLASTING THE SPELL CAST by Harry Potter on readers, now 20 years in its grip, seems unlikely to lift anytime soon. The seven-book series has sold more than 450 million copies worldwide; the movie franchise it spawned has grossed $7.7 billion. J.K. Rowling is now worth some $650 million, Forbes estimates, her fortune boosted by payouts from theme parks in Florida, California and Japan. That figure would be higher had she not donated an estimated $150 million to charity over the years. Yet still it climbs: Thanks to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child—a new London theatrical production and published script—plus Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a 2016 movieand-script-book combo, Rowling banked $95 million in the 12 months to June 2017. Two decades on, she’s releasing new work and cashing in on the old—lucrative dark arts indeed. 2 3 4 5 J.K. ROWLING JAMES PATTERSON JEFF KINNEY DAN BROWN STEPHEN KING $95 MIL $87 MIL $21 MIL $20 MIL $15 MIL 6 8 9 10 10 JOHN GRISHAM NORA ROBERTS PAULA HAWKINS E.L. JAMES DANIELLE STEEL RICK RIORDAN $14 MIL $14 MIL $13 MIL $11.5 MIL $11 MIL $11 MIL CODE GREEN RIGHT ON TRACK THE DA VINCI CODE scribe’s latest movie adaptation was a flop, but in the past year, Dan Brown still doubled his earnings from the same period 12 months earlier, thanks to an estimated eight-figure advance for his upcoming novel Origin. Prior to Origin, Brown’s most recent Robert Langdon novel, Inferno (source of that cinematic misfire), was 2013’s adult-fiction bestseller, with 1.7 million hardcover sales alone, according to Penguin Random House. BRITISH NOVELIST Paula Hawkins, author of the psychological thriller The Girl on the Train, debuted on Forbes’ writers list last year and just keeps a-rollin’: She sold 2.2 million print books in the U.S. over the past 12 months, the most of any female author save the inexorable J.K. Rowling. The film version of Train grossed $173 million in 2016; Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners has acquired the rights to her second novel, this year’s chart-topping mind-bender Into the Water. ALL EARNINGS ARE FOR JUNE 1, 2016 THROUGH MAY 31, 2017, BEFORE TAXES AND OTHER FEES. ALL BOOK-SALES DATA ARE SOURCED FROM NPD BOOKSCAN, WHICH TRACKS 85% OF THE DOMESTIC PRINT MARKET. ESTIMATES ARE COMPILED BY EXAMINING PRINT, E-BOOK AND AUDIOBOOK SALES, CONSIDERING TV AND MOVIE EARNINGS, AND TALKING TO AUTHORS, AGENTS, PUBLISHERS, LAWYERS AND OTHER EXPERTS. SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 49 As Velodyne eyes an IPO that could value it in the billions, David Hall, its founder and CEO, still feels most at home tinkering in his electronics lab. Eyes on the Road How Velodyne’s vision sensors are ushering in the self-driving-car revolution. BY ALAN OHNSMAN 50 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 Technology S TIMOTHY ARCHIBALD FOR FORBES econds after David Hall punches in a code, the electronic gate to his waterfront residence swings open. It’s a large compound but not the kind you’d expect from a tech entrepreneur who is as responsible as anyone for ushering in the self-driving-car revolution. Hall, 66, is CEO of Velodyne, the leading maker of LiDAR sensors, the “eyes” that allow autonomous vehicles to see what’s around them. He lives among a ramshackle collection of low-slung, shingled and metal structures built around a concrete plot on the Bay Area island town of Alameda, California. It’s his favorite refuge, equal parts living quarters and workshop, where this inveterate tinkerer and serial inventor can work on his pet projects. At one end there’s a barn-size industrial shed where Hall and a team of engineers are perfecting one of his latest obsessions: a patented technology that keeps boats steady in the roughest waters. Marta, his wife and the head of business development at Velodyne, paints and sculpts in an art studio nestled inside another building. A couple of his Ford F-150 pickups are parked near a hulking crane that hauls boats in and out of the water. Hall’s home itself is a houseboat, or rather a roomy prefab structure bolted onto a barge. From the living room you can hear small waves lapping at the shores of the sleepy canal that separates Alameda from Oakland. It’s a world away from the bustle and glitz of Silicon Valley, where Velodyne has its headquarters, and that’s the point. “I’m an engineer,” the reclusive Hall says, referring to both profession and persona. “I’m basically an introvert, a nerd ahead of my time.” About a decade ahead of his time. In 2006, Hall patented one of his inventions—a multi-beam spinning LiDAR sensor—that put Velodyne, albeit almost accidentally, at the center of a revolution that’s disrupting the auto and tech industries. Hall built the LiDAR sensor on a whim. Velodyne, which he had founded in 1983, was a successful business known for specialized audio equipment. But always itching to keep inventing, in the early aughts Hall became obsessed with a seemingly fantastical contest: a Defense Department-sponsored race for autonomous vehicles. It promised to be both fun and an excellent proving ground for his engineering chops. Over a couple of years, Hall refined a roof-mounted LiDAR (for “light distance and ranging”) unit consisting of 64 lasers spun by a small electric motor; the device became a favorite of the race’s winning teams. “It was revolutionary,” says William “Red” Whittaker, a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University and a father of the autonomous-vehicle movement. The races, known as the DARPA Challenges, became the Big Bang event for self-driving cars, and Hall’s LiDAR forever changed Velodyne from a modest family-run business into a hot commodity: a 34-year-old startup whose technology is remaking transportation and robotics. Today Velodyne is the top supplier of advanced automotive LiDAR and sells its sensors to virtually every auto and tech company that’s building or testing autonomous vehicles. GM, Ford, Uber and China’s Baidu are big buyers, and even Caterpillar uses Velodyne’s tech for gargantuan robotic mining trucks. Google has been a major customer for years, though it’s also making its own sensors. No company other than Velodyne produces comparable units in sufficient quantities to meet the growing demand. Being the pick-and-shovel seller in the gold rush to a self-driv- VELODYNE ing future is proving to be lucrative. Velodyne, which remains private, says revenue is expected to be about $200 million this year and the company is profitable. It has set its sights on the billion-dollar sales mark, says Mike Jellen, Velodyne’s president, though he won’t say when it will reach that milestone. The company is ramping up production quickly, following a $150 million investment from Baidu and Ford last year. It was the first outside money into the company since Hall raised $200,000, mostly from his parents and his grandfather, to start the business. Velodyne won’t disclose its valuation, but an estimate by Forbes, based on expected revenue, suggests a market value of about $2 billion. Hall is said to own more than 50%, giving him an estimated net worth of more than $1 billion. Jellen says an IPO is likely in “the 2018–19 time period.” But Hall is already thinking bigger. He wants to increase LiDAR production capacity from thousands of sensors a year to at least a million by next year. To do that, he’s busy transforming Velodyne’s new San Jose factory into a giant robot itself: a fully automated megafactory that speeds up production while reducing the cost of his complex devices to a level competitors can’t match. Think of it as a scaled-down version of Elon Musk’s “machine that makes the machine,” as the Tesla founder has described his famed Gigafactory and next-generation plants. While an automated facility won’t be making Teslas until at least 2019 or 2020, Hall wants his to be fully robotic by next year. If he pulls it off, Velodyne will be at the forefront of two seismic shifts in tech: cars that drive themselves and factories that need human technicians and programmers but no assembly workers. “Here’s the goal,” Hall says. “Can you run your factory with the lights off? If you can do that, then you can actually make this stuff in the United States.” HALL MAY BE a tech mogul in the making, but he remains the quintessential engineer, someone who is most at home tinkering in a lab and typically dressed in a faded blue Oxford shirt, chinos and running shoes. He’s often terse when the subject turns to himself, but his eyes light up when he discusses things like his 1970s Boston machine shop, which made specialty parts for clients such as Raytheon and Harvard Medical School. Hall grew up in Connecticut, the son of an engineer who built nuclear power plants and the grandson of a physicist who in the 1930s invented a scanning process to make color photographs. It was his grandfather who had helped Hall, as a teenager, set up his own workshop, where, among other things, he made a motorized bicycle and a “really loud” guitar amplifier. He studied mechanical engineering at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University during the tumultuous early 1970s. After college he moved to Boston to open a shop to build parts for tech, medical and industrial companies. The projects required creativity, but the anonymity of the work was frustrating. He decided he needed to move into consumer products. “If I walk down the street sometime in the future and yell out my brand name, every now and then I’ll find somebody that has heard of me,” he recalls thinking. In the early 1980s, Hall moved to the Bay Area with a plan to get into the audio business, which was booming. “You could go to a stereo store, and they were always looking for something new,” he says. With backing from his family, he started making premium SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 51 Technology VELODYNE subwoofers with a design (which he patented) that reduced distortion. He named the company Velodyne, in a nod to his passion for cycling. His speakers, which cost between $2,000 and $5,000 a pop, caught on. “I was able to make it louder and deeper than anybody had ever done before without it sounding like the speakers were going to fall apart,” he says. His brother Bruce joined to handle sales. Business grew, and customers included Bay Area sports stars and the late Robin Williams. But competition in the audio business, particularly on price, became increasingly cutthroat, and by the late 1990s Hall was again looking for something new. As a diversion, he started making fighting robots for the cable show Robot Wars. But it was the annual series of DARPA Challenges—races for autonomous Velodyne is working to fully automate its San Jose megafactory. vehicles that were first held in the California desert and later moved to urban environments—that offered a more seriLiDAR sensor, says it has range and image quality that top anything ous test for his ingenuity. Starting in 2002, Hall experimented with a on the market. Velodyne is rolling out a new solid-state “Velarray” number of technologies, including cameras and lasers, and entered LiDAR, with no spinning parts, to go toe-to-toe with competitors a vehicle in the 2004 and 2005 races. After recognizing the limitaat the lower end and is readying longer-range units to fend off those tions of cameras, Hall and others turned their attention to LiDAR, at the higher end. For now, Velodyne remains the undisputed leada technology used for mapping and surveying that took individual er, in part because none of the other companies are manufacturing pictures and stitched them together into detailed maps. at scale. “If you’re working on self-driving, you’re trying to get your It was his adaptation of LiDAR into a roof-mounted unit with hands on Velodyne, because that’s the most likely unit you can get in 64 spinning lasers that proved to be a breakthrough and finally gave any quantities,” says Mark Wheeler, a veteran of Google and Apple cars vision. “It was enabling for the kind of general driving we were who’s chief technology officer for DeepMap, a Palo Alto developgoing for,” says Whittaker, the CMU roboticist. Using Hall’s LiDAR, er of mapping services for driverless cars. Hall dismisses his compeWhittaker’s Tartan Racing team won the $2 million prize in 2007. tition with a “been there, done that” wave of the hand. “Does anyStanford, whose team was led by Sebastian Thrun, who later started one know how to mass-produce LiDAR other than me?” he asks. “It Google’s self-driving-car project, came in second. It, too, used Veloturns out I’m the critical link in this whole thing.” dyne’s LiDAR. Most of the other industry pioneers, who are now Not everyone in the autonomous-vehicle universe is a fan of leading autonomous-vehicle programs at Google, Uber, Ford, ToyLiDAR. The most notable holdout is none other than Musk, who ota and a host of tech startups, are also DARPA Challenge veterans. committed Tesla to using a combination of cameras, radar and Many became Hall’s customers. “Some good ideas really make it and sonar that he says provides sufficient sensing capabilities. But even change the world,” Whittaker says. without Tesla, the market for Velodyne’s gear remains huge. Today Velodyne’s headquarters are in San Jose, but Hall’s efforts to keep there are a few thousand prototype driverless cars being tested. the company at the forefront of his industry are centered some 38 While no one knows exactly when self-driving vehicles will be sold miles to the north, in an Alameda R&D lab that’s close to his marina to consumers, forecaster IHS Markit expects sales will grow rapidcompound. In a space that looks like an unusually well-funded high ly to 600,000 units in 2025 and at least 43% annually for a decade school maker lab, Ph.D.s in computer science, electrical engineerafter that. That would imply a cumulative 76 million vehicles driving ing, physics and optics are pushing the capabilities of Hall’s LiDAR. themselves through cities and highways by 2035. Velodyne’s foreVelodyne’s devices give cars a 360-degree view that is rendered as casts are for hockey-stick growth of at least 300% annually for the a 3-D “cloud” of points on a map. Whether it’s day or night, a vehinext few years, says Jellen, the company president. cle can “see” everything in a 200-meter (or 650-foot) radius, allowThat goes a long way toward explaining why Hall, whose coming cars that travel at highway speed to detect distant hazards and pany already employs 530 people, is so focused on his megafactoavoid collisions. Last year, Hall sold thousands of units. This year, ry. The facility opened early this year in San Jose. About 200 workers he plans on selling tens of thousands, with list prices ranging from are busy assembling microelectronics and optical components for about $8,000 for a 16-laser model (which looks like a hockey puck) the newest LiDAR units. But over the next 18 months, the work will to as much as $85,000 for a 64-laser unit. “There really was no other be taken over by robots that are popping up within the facility. Hall game in the market, and no one as advanced,” says Jim McBride, and his engineers are figuring out the final form of the robotic manFord’s technical leader for autonomous vehicles. ufacturing process. He’s not ready to share details, but he says the faRivals have emerged. Quanergy raised $90 million from, among cility will soon be ready to churn out a million units a year. “It has to others, auto-parts supplier Delphi in 2016 to make low-cost solidbe automated to make these volumes,” Hall says. He adds: “This is state LiDAR units, and Luminar, which got $36 million to fund a far more interesting to me than all the LiDAR marketing stuff.” F 52 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 PROMOTION 1 Participants posed for a group photo taken by a drone from Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2017 honoree, Matthew Cua, Founder of SkyEye Analytics. FORBES UNDER 30 SUMMIT ASIA: The second annual Forbes Under 30 Summit Asia was held in Manila, Philippines on July 25, 2017 at the Solaire Resort and Casino. Themed “Diversity & Empowerment,” the summit brought together some 240 of the most influential young entrepreneurs, innovators and game-changers from across Asia and the rest of the world, as featured in the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Asia lists, along with industry leaders and other distinguished guests. The summit consisted of panel discussions, live demonstrations, a Food and Music Festival and provided networking opportunities for participants. PROMOTION 2 LEADING INNOVATION ACROSS ASIA PART 1: ASIA’S BIGGEST TECH DISRUPTORS TODAY Asia’s biggest tech disruptors demonstrated their solutions in presentations moderated by Paul Armstrong, Digital Director for Asia-Pacific at Forbes Media. Hrishikesh Datar, Founder, Vakilsearch Legal Solutions Daisy Guo, Cofounder, Tezign Soowon Sophie Eom, Cofounder, Solidware PART 2: TEACHING OLD TECH NEW TRICKS Aisa Mijeno, Cofounder & CEO of SALt presented the SALt lamp, a sustainable, ecologically designed lantern activated by saltwater. (L-R) Jamie Beaton & Sharndre Kushor, Cofounders, Crimson Education; Paul Armstrong Prusothman Sina Raja, Cofounder, Privi Medical PART 3: ASIA: THE WORLD’S LAND OF OPPORTUNITY Young entrepreneurs from around the world discussed opportunities in Asia in a panel discussion. (L-R) Fabian von Heimburg, Cofounder, HotNest Technology; Abbas Kazmi, Managing Partner & Cofounder, Collegiate Capital; Shahab Shabibi, Cofounder, Machine Ventures; Lewis D’Vorkin, Chief Product Officer, Forbes Media Yogita Agrawal, Cofounder of SoaPen introduced the SoaPen, a playful teaching tool, which allows kids to draw on their dry hands. PART 4: THE FUTURE OF TECH: GENERATION Z Two of this year’s youngest list honorees, Sanjay Kumaran & Shravan Kumaran, Cofounders of GoDimensions, took to the stage to show what the newest generation of technologists are capable of. (L-R) Shravan Kumaran; Sanjay Kumaran PROMOTION 3 ONE-ON-ONE YOU’VE BEEN HACKED! WITH CHATRI SITYODTONG, CHAIRMAN & CEO, ONE CHAMPIONSHIP Chatri Sityodtong shared his inspirational journey and experiences in an interview with Randall Lane, Editor of Forbes magazine. Saket Modi, Cofounder & CEO of Lucideus did a ‘live’ demonstration on how he hacked into an audience member’s phone from the stage. CHANGING ASIA PART 1: SO LONG, GLASS CEILING This year’s top female entrepreneurs shared about the shifting perception of women in the workplace and how they’ve handled the transition. (L-R) Chatri Sityodtong; Randall Lane PART 2: THE FUTURE OF TECH: GENERATION Z (L-R) Carla Thomas, Senior Producer, Forbes Media; Neelofa, Founder, NH Prima International; Lee Jisoo, Cofounder, Dano; Katrina Razon, Managing Partner, Third Culture Music + Media & Director, Wonderfruit Festival Chris Kelsey, Cofounder of Cazza introduced his startup that develops 3D printing technologies to construct buildings. PART 3: ART AS A MEDIUM FOR CHANGE Some of Asia’s most talented creatives discussed how they use their art form as a platform for positive social change in a panel discussion. (L-R) Shahnawaz Zali, Director/Producer; Ann Louie Li, Founder, annlouieli.com & Chrysogem; Archie Oclos, Street Artist & Painter; Lewis D’Vorkin, Chief Product Officer, Forbes Media PART 4: SOLVING ASIA’S BIGGEST PROBLEMS 30 Under 30 Asia honorees presented their solutions that are changing Asia and the world – one problem at a time, moderated by Rana Wehbe, Senior Digital Editor, Asia-Pacific, Forbes Media. Ankit Kawatra, Founder, Feeding India (L-R) Rebecca Paranjothy & Vanessa Paranjothy, Cofounders, Freedom Cups (L-R) Nirary Dacho, Cofounder, Refugee Talent; Rana Wehbe Daroath Phav, Executive Director, WaterSHED PROMOTION 4 DISCOVERY AREA FOOD & MUSIC FESTIVAL Some of the most exciting inventions and products that landed their creators on this year’s 30 Under 30 Asia list were displayed at the summit. The products included smart guitars, cutting edge VR sets, robots, drones, 360 degrees cameras and more. The summit’s Food and Music Festival in the evening featured cooking demonstrations from Chef Seira Furuya, Chef de Partie at GAKUSHIKAIKAN, and Chef Michael (Miko) Aspiras, Pastry Chef & Partner at Tasteless Food Group. Michael Tubiera, Bar Manager at La Lola Group, also presented a Forbes Under 30 cocktail, created especially for the summit. Katrina Razon (DJ Katsu) and Mikhail Schemm (DJ Mikhail), Third Culture Music + Media, spun the decks for the participants, while all-star Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia alumnus and Filipino singersongwriter Jake Zyrus (formerly known as Charice Pempengco) took to the stage for a truly memorable end to the night. Jonathan Shen (middle), Cofounder of The Golden Duck presented handcrafted gourmet salted egg yolk snack products. Chef Seira Zhang Bohan (middle), Founder of Poputar demonstrated a smart guitar that has 120 LEDs on the guitar finger board to help locate chord positions. Jake Zyrus Chef Miko Uppma Virdi (right), Founder of Chai Walli presented some of the finest Indian chai range with Ayurvedic qualities at the Pop Up Tea Bar. DJ Katsu Michael Tubiera A participant trying on Vue, smart glasses created by 30 Under 30 Asia honoree Jason Gui (right), Cofounder of Vigo Technologies. DJ Mikhail PROMOTION 5 (L-R) Enzo Razon, International Container Terminal Services Inc; William Adamopoulos, CEO/Asia, Forbes Media; Katrina Razon, Managing Partner, Third Culture Music + Media & Director, Wonderfruit Festival Summit participants posed for a fun shot at the photo booth. (L-R) Hu Tao, Founder, XunQiu; Lewis D’Vorkin, Chief Product Officer, Forbes Media; Jules Jurado, Senior Associate - Entrepreneur Selection and Growth, Endeavour Philippines (L-R) Mara Coson, Manager – Procurement, SM Retail; Carl Jan Cruz, CEO, Carl Jan Cruz; Daisy Guo, Cofounder, Tezign (L-R) Shruti Malik, Cofounder, innov8; Ritesh Malik, Founder, Project Guerilla; Saket Modi, Cofounder & CEO, Lucideus (L-R) Tatsuya Honda, User Interface Designer, Fujitsu; Ahmad Shiina, Cofounder, Timers; Toshiki Abe, Founder, Ridilover (L-R) Lindsay Rogers, Cofounder, Chello; Hugh Stephens, Founder, Schedugram; Guilherme Faria, Cofounder, UnCloset (L-R) Vivy Yusof, Cofounder, FashionValet; Abby Zhang, Cofounder, YEECHOO; Neelofa, Founder, NH Prima International (L-R) He Wei, Founder, Shenzhen Vxfly Intelligent Information Technology; Tom Williams, Founder, WeTeach (L-R) Jan Wong, Founder, OpenMinds Resources; Sonam Pelden, Regional Head of Marketing, ServisHero (L-R) Rohit Pothukuchi, Founder, Standard Indian Legal Citation; Randall Lane, Editor, Forbes magazine; Teguh Ariwibowo, Cofounder, Pinjam Indonesia; Tyovan Widagdo, Founder, Bahaso; Marshall Pribadi, Founding CEO, PrivyID PROMOTION 6 (L-R) Akshay Navaladi, Founder, Healthskool Clinics; Jeffrey Yam, Director, Integrated Capital Holdings; Shikha Ahluwalia, Cofounder, StalkBuyLove; Nishrit Shrivastva, Cofounder, StalkBuyLove (L-R) Vinesh Johny, Cofounder & Executive Pastry Chef, The Lavonne Academy; Rana Wehbe, Senior Digital Editor, Asia-Pacific, Forbes Media; Isabella Sway Tin, Co-owner, Rangoon Tea House; Htet Myet Oo, Cofounder & MD, Rangoon Tea House (L-R) Karan Tanna, Founder & CEO, Yellow Tie Hospitality; Lucas Patchett, Cofounder, Orange Sky Laundry; Munaf Kapadia, Chief Eating Officer, The Bohri Kitchen; Nicholas Marchesi, Cofounder, Orange Sky Laundry (L-R) Vasil Rusinov, COO, mClinica; Chatri Sityodtong, Chairman & CEO, ONE Championship; Jon Lin Shiyang, CFO, mClinica (L-R) Liu Yueting, Cofounder, Airwallex; Zhang Yijia, Cofounder, Xtecher; Esther Jiang, COO, UniCareer; Yu Jia, CEO, UniCareer; Dai Ying, Founder, Beijing Beauty of Fashion (L-R) Yuki Shimahara, Founder, LPixel; Nicolas Travis, Founder, Allies of Skin; Patrick Kahn, Operations Director, CAPTIVATE Solutions; Naofumi Yamada, Founder, PKSHA Technology A SPECIAL THANKS TO THE SPONSORS AND PARTICIPANTS OF THE FORBES UNDER 30 SUMMIT ASIA HOST SPONSOR CORPORATE SPONSOR FORBES ASIA EDUCATION PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRANCO VOGT FOR FORBES The Many Faces of Harvey Mudd Diversity strengthens—and nowhere has that lesson been better applied than on a tiny, geeky campus in southern California. BY CAROLINE HOWARD MARIA KLAWE ARRIVED on campus in 2006 with a dramatic plan. As Harvey Mudd College’s new president, she’d lead a transformation of the highly regarded computer-science- and engineering-focused school into a truer rival of Stanford and MIT by luring away every woman and minority from those big institutions she could. Harvey Mudd College president Maria Klawe (center) among her students on campus. SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 59 FORBES ASIA EDUCATION from 29% a decade To recruit them, Klawe ago. One particularly pitched Mudd’s intimate meaningful milestone 800-person campus came in 2014 when at the base of southMudd gave out more ern California’s San engineering degrees to Gabriel Mountains, its women than it did to small class sizes and its men for the first time greater diversity. All of it in its 62-year history. seems to have paid off. “It’s been my life PayScale, a Seattle comgoal for the past 20 pany that collects and years to change the sells compensation data, portrait of mining face of science and enshows that Mudd grads Aentrepreneur Harvey Mudd. gineering to be more have higher early- and representative of women and people mid-career salaries than peers from of color,” says Klawe, 66, a mathemaStanford, UPenn and Harvard. tician, painter and ex-dean of PrincWhile Klawe’s women-andeton’s engineering school. “Mudd is minorities plan received a generally my test kitchen.” positive reception at Mudd, detracWhile her experiment has signifitors worried it would lower admiscantly changed Mudd, its curricusion standards and tarnish Mudd’s reputation. It did the opposite. At No. lum remains true to the vision of its namesake founder, mining entrepre18, Mudd has never ranked higher neur Harvey Mudd, who wanted to on Forbes’ annual list of the nation’s create a technical school with a firm best colleges, and it has risen steadily from its No. 52 spot on the first rank- grounding in the liberal arts. Every current Mudd student graduates ing in 2008; at least 25% of Mudd’s with a bachelor of science degree but incoming freshmen received a pernot before taking requisite classes fect 800 SAT math score. like Fluidity, a course co-taught by Sixty-two percent of Mudd stua math and an art professor on the dents are nonwhite, a dramatic shift science of liquids and their depiction from five years ago, when that figure was 46%. Women account for nearly in art. “Imagine that being taught at another school,” Klawe says. F half of today’s students, an increase AMERICA’S TOP COLLEGES BEST VALUE SCHOOLS These colleges were scored on tuition costs, school quality, postgrad earnings and student debt. 1 RANK LOCATION FULLTIME UNDERGRAD POPULATION ANNUAL COST 1 2 3 4 HARVARD UNIVERSITY Cambridge MA STANFORD UNIVERSITY Stanford CA YALE UNIVERSITY New Haven CT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Princeton NJ 7,183 $64,400 6% 7,000 $64,477 5% 5,509 $66,445 7% 5,277 $61,160 7% ACCEPTANCE RATE 60 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 5 2 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES Berkeley, CA TUITION $12,972 LA, CA TUITION $12,705 3 4 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA Princeton, NJ $41,820 Gainesville, FL $6,313 5 MIT Cambridge, MA $45,016 Cambridge, MA $43,938 7 8 STANFORD UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Irvine, CA $13,179 Stanford, CA $45,195 9 10 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS 6 CALTECH Pasadena CA 4,492 $63,250 8% 1,001 $63,471 9% 7 BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY Provo, UT $5,000 8 1 2 SUNY MARITIME COLLEGE U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY Scroggs Neck, NY MID-CAREER SALARY $144,000 Annapolis, MD MID-CAREER SALARY $134,000 3 4 U.S. MERCHANT MARINE ACADEMY U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY WEST POINT Kings Point, NY $134,000 West Point, NY $131,000 5 6 HARVARD UNIVERSITY Davis, CA $13,896 MIT Cambridge MA No one gets lost in the crowd at these schools, which produce grads with big mid-career salaries. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY We looked for schools with low student debt, high postgrad salaries, high graduation rates, proven career success and strong student satisfaction. For the full list and methodology, visit forbes.com/top-colleges. COLLEGE PUBLIC SCHOOLS WITH BIG SALARIES1 9 6 U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY Colorado Springs, CO $122,000 COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES Golden, CO $114,000 7 8 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Berkeley, CA $112,000 Atlanta, GA $112,000 9 10 $111,000 San Diego, CA $108,000 U.S. COAST UNIVERSITY OF GUARD ACADEMY CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO New London, CT 10 UNIVERSITY OF PENN. Philadelphia PA DUKE UNIVERSITY Durham NC BROWN UNIVERSITY Providence RI POMONA COLLEGE Claremont CA 10,406 $66,800 10% 6,611 $66,739 11% 6,318 $65,380 9% 1,651 $64,870 10% 11 CLAREMONT MCKENNA COLLEGE Claremont CA 1,327 $66,325 11% 12 DARTMOUTH COLLEGE Hanover NH 4,267 $67,044 11% 1Median salary of alumni with ten-plus years experience. 2Average federal debt of college grads in 2013-14 and 2014-15, not including private gin, return on assets, tuition dependency, admissions yield, percentage of freshmen receiving grants, and instructional expenses per FTE. who donate). Sources: National Center for Education Statistics; PayScale; College Scorecard; Council for Aid to Education. PRIVATE SCHOOLS WITH LOW DEBT2 FINANCIAL FITNESS TEST: THE 10 HEALTHIEST AND SICKEST PRIVATE COLLEGES3 Grads of these private schools won’t be paying off loans when their own children attend school. To get to the top of this class, you need balance-sheet strength, operational surpluses and a fat endowment. 2 COLLEGE OF THE OZARKS BEREA COLLEGE Point Lookout, MO AVERAGE STUDENT DEBT $0 Berea, KY AVERAGE STUDENT DEBT $5,428 3 GPA GRADE COLLEGE GPA GRADE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 4.50 A+ ALDERSON BROADDUS COLLEGE 0.60 D WILLIAMS COLLEGE 4.50 A+ BECKER COLLEGE 0.86 D MIT 4.50 A+ MARY BALDWIN UNIVERSITY 0.87 D BOWDOIN COLLEGE 4.50 A+ WHEELING JESUIT UNIVERSITY 0.88 D YALE UNIVERSITY 4.50 A+ URBANA UNIVERSITY 0.88 D UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME 4.50 A+ OHIO DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY 0.89 D HARVARD UNIVERSITY 4.50 A+ BENEDICT COLLEGE 0.89 D STANFORD UNIVERSITY 4.50 A+ LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY 0.89 D WELLESLEY COLLEGE 4.50 A+ UTICA COLLEGE 0.91 D DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 4.50 A+ NEWBURY COLLEGE-BROOKLINE 0.93 D 4 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Princeton, NJ $6,245 BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, IDAHO Rexburg, ID $6,500 5 6 DUKE UNIVERSITY HARVARD UNIVERSITY Durham, NC $7,000 Cambridge, MA $7,536 7 8 WELLESLEY COLLEGE Wellesley, MA $8,200 THE MOST GRATEFUL GRADS4 How to measure college ROI: Find the schools with the alumni who give back in droves. Provo, UT $8,616 10 RICE UNIVERSITY POMONA COLLEGE Houston, TX $8,750 Claremont, CA $9,138 14 15 16 17 WILLIAMS COLLEGE Williamstown MA COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY New York NY CORNELL UNIVERSITY Ithaca NY UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Chicago IL AMHERST COLLEGE Amherst MA 2,083 $66,240 18% 7,523 $69,084 7% 14,303 $65,494 15% 5,835 $70,100 8% 1,795 $66,572 14% 18 HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE Claremont CA 815 $69,355 13% 10-YEAR MEDIAN 3-YEAR DONATIONS AVERAGE ALUMNI PER STUDENT PARTICIPATION COLLEGE BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, PROVO 9 13 COLLEGE 19 2017 GRATEFUL GRAD INDEX 1 DARTMOUTH COLLEGE $29,561 42.3% 100.00% 2 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 28,869 41.6 99.97 3 WILLIAMS COLLEGE 23,346 49.4 99.76 4 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 22,502 45.3 99.61 5 AMHERST COLLEGE 21,320 45.2 99.37 6 CLAREMONT MCKENNA COLLEGE 23,595 35.6 99.27 7 DAVIDSON COLLEGE 20,659 45.5 99.22 8 UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME 19,509 35.6 98.39 9 DUKE UNIVERSITY 32,107 28.5 98.36 10 WELLESLEY COLLEGE 17,451 50.4 98.25 11 HAVERFORD COLLEGE 17,593 40.1 98.17 12 WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY 18,184 37.4 98.16 13 STANFORD UNIVERSITY 30,826 26.8 97.97 14 YALE UNIVERSITY 31,936 24.2 97.22 15 MIT 47,755 23.6 97.01 20 21 22 23 24 25 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE Swarthmore PA U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY Annapolis MD GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY Washington D.C. RICE UNIVERSITY Houston TX BOWDOIN COLLEGE Brunswick ME U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY West Point NY HAVERFORD COLLEGE Haverford PA 1,571 $64,363 12% 4,525 9% 7,175 $66,971 17% 3,863 $58,253 16% 1,794 $63,440 15% 4,348 10% 1,233 $66,648 25% loans or Parent PLUS. 3Measures nine metrics: primary reserve ratio, viability ratio, endowment per full-time equivalent (FTE), operating mar4Measures ten-year median private donations per FTE for private colleges and three-year average alumni participation (percentage of alumni SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 61 TOP COLLEGES EDITED BY CAROLINE HOWARD WITH CARTER COUDRIET. REPORTED BY PATRICK FEDERLE, ANIS MUSLIMIN, HUNTER SHARF, CAROLINE SIMON AND DAN SPINELLI; GRATEFUL GRADS AND FINANCIAL HEALTH BY MATT SCHIFRIN. 1 Among the struggling schools below, Utica College recently slashed its tuition by 42%, and LIU, which has campuses in Brooklyn and on Long Island, has shaken up its administration and faculty. FORBES ASIA EDUCATION Critical Thinking Brian Ong is helping to change how Chinese kids get into U.S. colleges—and what they study once they get there. T en years ago, Brian Ong sold all his furniture and boarded a flight to Shanghai. He hadn’t majored in technology or engineering, so he didn’t have many obvious job prospects. But he knew he wanted to start a business and knew that Shanghai was brimming with opportunities. He researched ideas from finance to real estate, then settled on advising Chinese high school students on getting into top U.S. colleges. The industry seemed chaotic, rife with charges of plagiarized essays, cookie-cutter advice and unkept promises. He was sure he could offer a high-quality and more honest service. Besides, the grinding, spirit-sapping and often irrational process of college admissions was something he was very familiar with: He had earned his undergraduate degree at Yale and had just finished graduate school at Stanford. He had also helped two Chinese friends get into Harvard and Columbia in his free time. Today Ong, 33, owns and runs Bangdai, which boasts 48 employees in three offices—in Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen. He’s earned a reputation—and more than 15,000 Weibo followers—as the go-to counselor for superrich Chinese families sending their kids to the U.S. to study at the best schools. That allows him to charge fees ranging from $12,000 to $60,000 a student, or up to as much as the annual tuition at a typical 62 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 private American college. The company consults with 160 students a year. It’s no secret who’s paying those fees: “Some 25% of the people on your rich list are sending their kids to America to study,” he says, referring to the list of the 400 wealthiest people in China that appears on Forbes.com. That also allows him to pay his consultants $1,500 to $4,500 a month, enormous by Chinese standards considering that the mainland offices of the Big Four accounting firms pay their first-year associates $1,200, according to surveys on Glassdoor.com. (The average monthly income in the highestpaying city, Shanghai, is less than $1,050.) Bangdai is considered the model for China’s now more than 100 boutique college-counseling firms, all charging hefty fees while paying their staff very well. These firms are also spurring an increasing number of Chinese students at leading U.S. colleges to study the humanities rather than the hard sciences, an important trend that could make an impact on China in the decades ahead. These elite outfits are just a small part of a local industry that generated $4.5 billion in revenue in 2013, the latest figure available. The bulk of the industry serves a mass market, with some companies advising more than 2,000 students a year and often charging fees based on the schools the student is applying to—the higher the school is ranked, the higher the JASPER JAMES FOR FORBES BY REBECCA FENG Brian Ong, founder of Bangdai, steers kids toward the humanities rather than the usual STEM courses. FORBES ASIA EDUCATION fee, with the average around $12,000. These companies have come in for sharp criticism. In a report last year, the Reuters news service accused three of the biggest ones of not only ghostwriting personal statements and fabricating recommendation letters but also providing U.S. college-admission officers with free trips to China and then advertising to potential customers that the tours meant they’re “halfway to a successful application to a famous school.” In response, two of the companies issued statements denying the charges; the third didn’t respond. Most of the schools involved said they were unaware of such trips or published statements promising that they would no longer participate in these tours. The newer outfits are winning business by providing what they say is an individual service to each customer. Many interview students before matching them with counselors, and if the students think the counselors will do all the work for them, they won’t pass the interview. Instead, counselors brainstorm ideas for essays with the students and provide insights into U.S. culture by sharing their own experiences studying abroad. Indeed, Bangdai—which translates as “super awesome”—and similar companies hire mostly counselors who have graduated These students say their humanities majors provide them with a deeper understanding of American society along with solid English, writing and critical-thinking skills. Ong, who was raised in Malaysia, believes that if future mainland tycoons are educated in the humanities, they will one day infuse made-inChina products with more creativity and culture than China is known for today. But for now, these students return to China after four years of Aristotle, Machiavelli and Shakespeare, and they’re exactly what the new college counseling firms are looking to hire. Once at work, they often promote the path they took, reinforcing the trend toward a classic liberal arts education. When Max Wang, a former Stoooges counselor who’s now its chief marketing officer, was applying to U.S. colleges six years ago, his mother told him to go to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign because of the school’s record in producing Nobel Prize-winning scientists. Instead he chose Macalester College, a private liberal arts school in Minnesota, and majored in philosophy and international studies. He says the freedom to study the humanities is a privilege for the new generation of Chinese overseas students, whose parents are willing to invest 20 years of their savings without asking for a quick return upon their kids’ graduation (though grandparents often help out). “Our grandparents are engineers and our parents are doctors, so that we can be artists,” Wang says. After graduation, the Beijing native returned to China and developed a passion for helping Chinese students get into their ideal U.S. college, only to encounter his mother’s objections. “At first, she believed that consultants lie and manipulate students,” says Wang, 24. “Many of my friends would rather stay in America and hit the glass ceiling than come back. If you come back, you become either a reformer (of an industry) or a failure.” Working at Stoooges, which serves many students from second-tier cities such as Xi’an and Zhengzhou, has helped Wang understand the concerns of Chinese parents. He says many are focused only on a school’s rank on the many lists of best U.S. colleges published each year. “Most parents from those cities don’t speak English, and thus the only way they understand U.S. colleges is through the rankings,” says Wang. “It is not their fault.” He also notes that parents are often “superstitious” about American counselors, thinking they’ll be better than Chinese ones. “They feel safer when their kids are being guided by Americans,” he says. “There’s such anxiety.” Bangdai’s Ong says one reason the humanities aren’t popular in China is that parents sense that achievements in such fields are not “quantifiable.” “In China, there are many prizes set up for science but almost none for subjects in the humanities. Not being able to measure achievement makes parents think humanities are second-tier majors.” But in the echo of a popular saying among Chinese parents that “majoring in humanities makes graduation a synonym for unemployment,” young college counselors such as Ong and Wang are earning their own futures. F “MANY OF MY FRIENDS WOULD RATHER STAY IN AMERICA AND HIT THE GLASS CEILING THAN COME BACK.” from U.S. colleges, while counselors at the mass-market firms often lack overseas experience. “We are more like incubators of outstanding men and women,” claims Gao Shanglin, a Qingdao native who’s chief operating officer of Hangzhou-based Stoooges Education, a Bangdai rival. C.S. Yang, who’s entering her senior year at the University of Notre Dame, signed on with Stoooges when she began her U.S. college hunt four years ago. “My college counselor respected who I am,” she says. “He helped me reflect on the 18 years of my life.” The boutique services are helping to change not only how students approach the application process but also what they study when they get to college. Traditionally, Chinese students going to the U.S. majored in a STEM subject—science, technology, engineering or math. The goal was a good-paying job, an H1-B visa and ultimately a green card to stay in the U.S. Now, though there are few hard statistics, many elite Chinese students are pursuing degrees in the humanities—such as history, philosophy or English literature—even if it doesn’t immediately lead to gainful employment. This year, some 61% of Chinese students studying or planning to study abroad said they treat “opening my mind and seeing the world” as their priority, and 56% said they choose college majors based on their interests, according to a survey of Chinese students by Beijing-based New Oriental and New York-based market researcher Millward Brown. 64 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA EDUCATION School of Quant As computers overtake investing, a small college in New Jersey is remaking itself as the preeminent training ground for Wall Street’s financial engineers. It can teach you a few lessons. BY MATT SCHIFRIN T wenty-two-year-old Dakota Wixom is waving an 8-inch wand as he manipulates layers of screens containing data visualizations, applications and stock market charts, moving them around between five large presentation screens in a darkened room. The scene is reminiscent of one with Tom Cruise in Minority Report, but with a Wall Street twist. There are about two dozen undergraduates sitting attentively at workstations in this computer finance lab at the Stevens Institute of Technology, across the Hudson River from midtown Manhattan in Hoboken, New Jersey. It’s a Thursday in mid-July, and a leading financial newspaper has just run a cover story entitled “Man vs. Machine,” which obsesses over the onslaught of index funds and algorithmic trading that is currently driving the market and bringing turmoil to the $75 trillion asset-management business. Wixom has just completed a bachelor’s degree in quantitative finance, which required him not only to become Bloomberg-certified as a freshman but also to take a minimum of 14 classes in computer science and advanced mathematics. He is already a wizard at using the lab’s state-of-the-art interactive system, which was designed by Oblong Industries and is used by the likes of IBM’s Watson team and NASA. “You can’t just buy growth stocks and expect to outperform anymore,” says Wixom, a native of Vancouver, Washington, who graduated near the top of his high school class and intended to major in electrical engineering. “It becomes a data-science problem. There’s hundreds of hedge funds out there, right? And there’s a few that actually generate alpha consistently—firms like D.E. Shaw and Renaissance Technologies. What do those guys do? They hire quants. They hire data scientists. They hire programmers.” After summer internships in Schwab’s risk department and as a quant in the investment banking division of Japan’s Mizuho Bank, Wixom accepted an offer at Yewno, an artifi- cial-intelligence startup in Redwood City, California. Already working and based in New York City, he is building new financial products driven by machine learning. “If you want to measure a true exposure to a country, maybe you want to measure political unrest, right? We can now build indexes by connecting concepts, by measuring the performance of a concept over time. The idea is that you understand what’s driving the markets in the same way that a human analyst does. This is really exciting to me.” Wixom is one of 32 such quantitative finance graduates in Stevens’ class of 2017. QF, as it is known on the 55-acre campus, is a hot new major—another is cybersecurity—that is helping make Stevens one of the most desirable STEM colleges in the nation. With more than 90% of its students securing employment or a spot in graduate school, and placements at employers ranging from Google to Goldman Sachs to 2Sigma to Verizon and Johnson & Johnson, the school has been attracting record numbers of applications even as its median SAT scores have risen by more than 50 points in the past five years. Its admissions rate has fallen to 39% in 2016 from 54% a decade ago. It ranks 180th on Forbes’ annual list of America’s Top Colleges, up 68 spots from last year. It’s part of an impressive turnaround orchestrated by Stevens’ president, Nariman Farvardin, an Iranian-born, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute-trained electrical engineer who has been running the college since 2011. Farvardin’s CV is more than you might expect from someone in charge of a regional tech school. Besides his seven U.S. patents and 150 technical research papers, he has cofounded two companies: a fabless semiconductor firm and a startup that sought to make buildings more energy-efficient. He did all this during his 27-year tenure at the University of Maryland, including 7 years as dean of its Clark School of Engineering, 4 years as provost of the entire university and a spell as acting president. He was recruited SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 65 FORBES ASIA to Stevens after the college’s former president became embroiled in a self-dealing scandal that leveled the school’s finances and morale. Farvardin has streamlined Stevens’ senior management, plucking talent from not only industry but also nontraditional sources like New York City’s Fashion Institute of Technology, where Stevens found its new enrollment czar, Marybeth Murphy, who arrived in 2013 with a mission that included boosting female enrollment (it’s now at 30%). Overall undergraduate enrollment is up 28% in the past five years, to 3,100. Operating revenues are on the rise, and despite major construction under way all over campus, its endowment has increased to $166 million from $144 million five years ago. Stevens’ debt was recently upgraded by Standard & Poor’s to A–. At most tuition-dependent schools, the key to success is filling classrooms with new students every year. For Stevens, the critical factor in its recent popularity amid increasing STEM competition may be Farvardin’s willingness to break free from stodgy ivory-tower curriculums in favor of creating what are essentially four-year boot camps designed to train industryspecific, technology-savvy specialists. “We believe very strongly that the role of machines in the future will be far more significant, and perhaps even more significant than the role of human beings. And we want to be the university that is at the forefront of this,” say Farvardin as he peers across the river to Lower Manhattan from his penthouse office suite. “A student in quantitative finance at this university takes more courses in mathematics than an engineering student has to. These are very analytical people. They understand finance like the back of their hand. But they are masters of mathematics. And they are very conversant with the basics of computer science.” The architect of Stevens’ QF curriculum is George Calhoun, a Wharton Ph.D. with a 25-year background running publicly traded technology companies, mostly in wireless. His last post was a stint as the CEO of Illinois Superconductor, where he had been handpicked by hedge fund managers Paul Singer of Elliott Associates and Mark Brodsky, now of Aurelius Capital. “Stevens benefited from not having a legacy business school. [Academia] is not used to listening to the market and thinking in terms of product development and customers,” says Calhoun, who took the job in 2003 after seeing a small ad in The Economist about a new business school being formed at Stevens. “The typical academic model is: ‘I’m a tenured professor. I’ve been here for 20 years. This is the research I do. If you want some of that, you can pay me.’ ” Calhoun shaped Stevens’ quantitative finance program by talking to the folks in the industry who hire graduates. “I personally probably met 25 companies, mostly in the finance industry. I spent two or three hours, a long lunch, with the treasurer of Johnson & Johnson. Plus Honeywell and GE Capital. I asked, ‘What do you need?’ ” Inevitably, Calhoun would grill the execs about critical skills, and Stevens’ computer-programming and math-heavy course load was the result. “The two that were always at the top, oddly 66 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 enough, were Excel and C++. Both ends of the spectrum. And increasingly later on, it was Python,” says Calhoun, referring to a programming language now widely used in back-end Web development, data analysis and AI. “The QF program is not about breeding any one particular narrow type. It’s based on the premise that any job in finance today is a high-tech job. So it can be asset management, trading, risk, audit or insurance. Modeling, startups, fintech—they’re all driven by the same set of requirements.” Calhoun still teaches QF101, the introductory class for quantitative finance majors, in which beating the S&P 500 on a virtual portfolio for the semester will earn you an A on the final. This fall’s class is already filled, with 95 students registered. As an undergraduate, Dakota Wixom was one of 25 or so students to earn a spot on Stevens’ Student Managed Investment Fund, which has a $400,000 real-money portfolio currently invested in stocks like D.R. Horton, Tesoro, AT&T, Alphabet and Cognizant Technology. In his role as head of risk and asset allocation, he built an app that members could use to screen out overly risky investments. Besides his undergraduate research project on two-stage stochastic programming problems for portfolio optimization, Wixom also started Quantbros.com and Quantcourse.com: The first is an educational website for young quants, Preparing for the age the second an online course in which of machines: Nariman he teaches novices about multivariFarvardin, president of ate regressions using factor analysis the Stevens Institute of Technology, at and “how to program with financial the school’s Hanlon time series” in R, a language geared to Laboratory for Financial Analytics & Data statistical computing and graphics. Visualization. What lessons can investors glean from what’s going in Stevens’ classrooms? The biggest takeaway revolves around how, in a market driven by index funds, portfolio construction trumps securities selection in the long run. To this end, Stevens’ students have been using a model called Black-Litterman, a variant of Markowitz’s Modern Portfolio Theory and Sharpe’s Capital Asset Pricing Model developed in 1990 by the late mathematicians Fischer Black and Robert Litterman. The model basically allows more flexibility in creating return assumptions on various assets. MATTHEW FURMAN FOR FORBES EDUCATION Systematic rule-based investing is another mantra among Stevens’ budding quants, and Wixom’s personal algorithm-driven portfolio on Quantopian.com attempts to profit from the inevitable buy-sell order flow that results from the rebalancing of stock indexes. Calhoun adds that one of the lessons his Stevens students learned the hard way is to constantly question widely accepted market practices. He cites the China-induced stock market flash crash of August 2015. Because of “prudent” governance rules set up by its alumni-advised investment committee, Stevens’ student-run fund was forced to maintain stop-loss rules on its stock portfolio, and as a result it sold out nearly all its holdings during the sudden dip, at a big loss. “It just destroyed our portfolio for a few weeks there,” Wixom says. “It’s the traditional investing methods. We were kind of struggling with them.” F SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 67 The Philippines’ 50 Richest ROBERTO ONGPIN Laps of Luxury The Ongpin saga is culminating in a rollout of regal residences for the regional elite. A t 12:30 sharp, Roberto Ongpin opens his office door on the fifth floor of the glittering Makati Place in Manila. It’s his new, triple-towered luxury development of residences, commercial space and the swank members-only City Club, packed with amenities that include tennis and badminton courts, nine themed restaurants, a cocktail lounge and a wellness center. This is the nerve center for Alphaland Group, the upper-crust property firm whose shares Ongpin plans to list by the end of 2018. Dressed in a casual zippered vest and smoking a Tabacalera cigar, the 80-year-old Ongpin proceeds to share his remnants-toriches life story over lunch at a City Club private dining room. Known for courting controversy, Ongpin retains tight control of Alphaland, which he established in 2006 and delisted in 2014 after a messy split from U.K. investment group Ashmore. As chairman, Ongpin took over Ashmore’s 69% share and divided the assets. He kept Makati Place, the Makati Southgate office building, his opulent members-only Balesin Island Club, 25 minutes by air from Manila, and Baguio Mountain Lodges in northern Luzon, which is now being developed. “We are very exclusive,” he explains. “Snob appeal—that’s my business.” Alphaland is worth $1.1 billion, the silver-haired tycoon says, and he owns 92%. (He says the company netted better than $150 million in 2016.) He is also chairman of Atok-Big Wedge, a listed mining company of which he holds 58%. Together they put Ongpin at the No. 16 spot on this year’s list, with a net worth of $1.15 billion. Not included: an undisclosed number of debts and private assets, such as the Tabacalera cigar maker and 14 homes around the world, including in Tuscany, London, Paris, Salzburg and Saint-Tropez. He splits his time between Europe and the Philippines. Though his great-grandfather was a wealthy stationer who backed Filipino independence from Spain—a street in Manila 68 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 bears the Ongpin name—there was no silver spoon left when Roberto was born in 1937. The first son in a family of seven children, his earliest memories track to Japan’s wartime occupation: hunger pangs at bedtime, his father hauled away three times for interrogation, the baby of a suspected guerrilla speared by an enemy bayonet. “That’s why I’m a little guy,” he quips, referring to his 5-foot-6 frame. “I never had enough food.” At age 12, Ongpin was valedictorian at grade school. His grandmother wanted him to attend Ateneo de Manila University, the “Harvard of the Philippines,” getting him a scholarship by relentlessly badgering the Jesuit headmaster. It was the most formative period of his life. He graduated at 20 with an accounting degree and joined Procter & Gamble for two years before going to Harvard for an M.B.A. Returning to the Philippines in 1964, married and with a newborn son, he ascended the corporate ladder at SGV, an accounting firm, becoming managing partner in 1970. Nine years later, President Ferdinand Marcos tapped him for a cabinet post. He was 42 years old and served the seven remaining years of Marcos’ rule. Ongpin—“Bobby” to his friends, “RVO” to his staff—calls himself a visionary, a fighter and a survivor. From savvy trade and industry minister in the dictatorship, when accusations of corruption began sticking to his reputation—accusations he denies, saying he was a technocrat, not a crony—he moved on to myriad business ventures. “I have had many setbacks but more successes,” he summarizes as a plate of fried catfish salad arrives, the lettuce garnish flown in from Balesin’s working farm. Still, the octogenarian seems slightly gun-shy a year after the most ignominious ordeal of his life—the day in August 2016 when Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte went on national television to single him out as a favored oligarch, vowing to destroy him. The threat, which Ongpin calls a “bolt out of the blue,” was SONNY THAKUR FOR FORBES BY JANE A. PETERSON “Snob appeal— that’s my business”: Roberto Ongpin, with daughter Anna. SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 69 The Philippines’ 50 Richest ROBERTO ONGPIN FAMILY TIES—AND KNOTS coupled with an earlier vow to destroy online gaming. Together they dealt a harsh blow. Shares in PhilWeb, the onlinegambling operator that Ongpin led, dropped 90%; Ongpin resigned as chairman and sold his 57% stake to a Marcos relative. “I lost $360 million—I became a pariah,” he recounts, his voice just above a whisper, noting that unnamed friends and banks immediately shied away. But Ongpin is quick to stress he bears no rancor: “He is my president, and I will do all I can to support him and his policies. I am still optimistic about this government.” The dark days have passed, he says. Without PhilWeb’s cash flow, Ongpin had to put personal funds into Alphaland until he secured a seven-year loan from the Sy family’s BDO Unibank in February. Alphaland, he claims, has only a healthy 15% debt load. Existing office and commercial space is nearly all leased. At Makati Place, 60% of residential units in two towers are sold, he says, at 70 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 Ongpin for nine years. Meanwhile, Ongpin’s wife of 55 years, Monica, remains at their home in Tuscany, where she has lived for the past 25 years. An Italian-Chilean, she met Ongpin while they were graduate students “I came back because I owe him, in the U.S. Ongpin says and he needed me,” says Anna. Monica came to accept his infidelity long ago. “She knew she could not fence me,” he explains, “but she told me, ‘Don’t flaunt it.’ What I am is what I am.” When he’s not in Italy, the couple keep in touch with daily phone calls. “All the while I have loved my wife,” he says. “I never stopped loving her.” Still, their marriage was shaken when Monica learned about baby Michelle. Calling his wife “very bright and unique,” Ongpin says she has embraced his former lover and accepted Michelle and Julian as her own, insisting they each receive equal portions of his estate. —J.A.P. prices ranging to near $1 million for a three-bedroom. A third tower, originally designed as service apartments, has been retrofitted into 27 floors of offices, ready for occupancy in September. Meanwhile, City Club’s offerings await a big uptake. Planned for 5,000 memberships at $30,000 a piece, the club has sold 650, adding about 100 each year. Ongpin appears engrossed in launching a series of new projects at Alphaland, based on his belief that with the end of the subprime crisis, demand for luxury property in the Philippines (including from Hong Kong weekenders) will remain buoyant—and interest rates low. On Balesin (see box, p. 72), which he considers his most valuable asset, a cluster of 12 homes at $3 million to $5.5 million apiece is being built to order. He also recently bought the nearby Patnanungan Island, called Balesin Gateway, where Alphaland is designing an international airport, a golf course, a 300-room hotel and 500 private beach villas. And Alphaland is developing the first phase of Baguio Mountain Lodges—50 American-style log homes that are a four-hour drive north of Manila—with 250 more on the drawing board. “I make three times my cost every time I sell a log home,” Ongpin says, noting the initial bunch should sell out within three years. Ongpin wants to list Alphaland in either Bangkok or Singapore. Domestically, until 2019 it is barred from trading shares and Ongpin cannot become a director of a new listed Philippine company. The fiveyear ban was imposed by the Philippine Stock Exchange for disclosure failures related to the Ashmore divorce. In 2009, Philippine securities regulators charged Ongpin with insider trading at Philex Mining, when as vice chairman he sold shares to the chairman. His temper flares when asked for details about what he regards as a politically motived accusation. He appealed, winning in court four times, and the country’s SEC is restrained from any enforcement. SONNY THAKUR FOR FORBES Over a Friday dinner at Mykonos, City Club’s Greek restaurant, Anna Ongpin says she reluctantly returned to the Philippines, after nearly 30 years in America, at the behest of her father. “I came back because I owe him, and he needed me,” she says, noting her background as a management consultant. “He wants to trust family members. There was no one else.” The bargain she struck: two weeks in California every quarter. Anna, who acts and sounds American, considers her father a strategic-thinking micromanager with an incredible memory for numbers, as well as extremely demanding and prone to yelling. “I turn off my phone at night,” she admits. “I work a lot, but not as much as he does.” Among Ongpin’s other three children, his second daughter, Michelle—her German mother has been Ongpin’s live-in partner for ten years—worked at Alphaland and Philweb for nearly three years. Wanting a lifestyle change, Michelle left in 2012 for a stint in London working with Malaysian tycoon Ananda Krishnan. She now lives at Makati Place with her photographer husband and is half-owner of a Manila restaurant. Also in residence is the patriarch’s youngest, Julian, an artist. His Australian mother, who recently died of cancer, lived with Live from Singapore, Asia Business Report brings you the latest regional business news and analysis at the start of your day. Weekday mornings at 0630, 0730, 0830 and 0930 hrs (HKT) Sharanjit Leyl, Presenter Rico Hizon, Presenter The Philippines’ 50 Richest ROBERTO ONGPIN ISLAND OPUS Getting outside analysis on Alphaland proves difficult. Ashmore Group did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Property analysts no longer track the company now that it’s private and refuse to go on the record with personal conjecture. Meanwhile, Hannah Yulo, Alphaland’s CFO from 2011 to 2014 and now CIO at DoubleDragon Properties, exudes praise for her former boss. As a frequent user of City Club and Balesin, she foresees a bright future for both. Metro Manila, she believes, has enough well-heeled residents to afford the membership fees. “Ongpin is brilliant,” she says. “No one else has developed anything like Balesin. Aman [resort] is beautiful, but it’s not a members’ club.” During the workweek, when he’s in the Philippines, Ongpin rarely leaves Makati Place. He lives in the penthouse, 72 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 rising at 6 a.m. to hit the gym for an hour, a regime prescribed by his wellness-center doctor, who pronounces his health excellent. Most of the day is spent in his palatial office, with adjacent nap room. He enjoys a drink in the bar, a smoke in the cigar boutique and dining in his themed restaurants. For outside lunch dates in Manila, he takes a helicopter to avoid the traffic. Inside Ongpin’s office, a massive desk is piled with contracts, a MacBook, a computer screen linked to his stock portfolio and the galley copy of a book he’s editing about Balesin. On the wall above is his most prized possession: painted portraits of his great-grandparents. Other personal items include artwork from two preschool-age grandsons who live in London. Among photos from the Marcos years: Ongpin with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Working closely with Ongpin is a fiercely loyal cadre of two dozen senior staffers—his secretary of 50 years is the longest-serving, followed by his CEO, with 40 years. One perk will be “very large” stock options if and when the company goes public. “I am good to my people, but I drive them hard,” Ongpin confesses, noting he has fired a dozen senior staff at Alphaland through the years. “If they can’t take it, they must leave. I want the best.” Top lieutenants also live in units at Makati Place rent-free, often gathering after hours at the club bar. They seem like a happy family, always available—a requirement, they say, that comes with the job. That includes his 52-year-old daughter, Anna, named Alphaland’s vice chairman and president last year. While she’s slated to succeed her father, that day seems a long way off. F SONNY THAKUR FOR FORBES One Saturday morning in July, Alphaland’s hangar at the Manila airport is bustling as 66 elite Filipinos fill the company’s private jet for a quick flight— beyond the smog—to their weekend playground. Slipping in last is Ongpin himself. On arrival, smiling staff offer flowered necklaces and whisk away luggage to two themed villages—Balesin and SaintTropez—open this particular weekend. Guests fan out to myriad activities from horse-riding to antiaging treatments. The Aegle Wellness Center, attached to the Balesin Island Club offers seven themed villages, after Ongpin’s favorite destinations. Mykonos village and staffed by doctors, To join Balesin, private members pay $60,000 for Gold offers hormone replacements, thalasstatus, which includes 7 free overnight visits, or $100,000 for sotherapy whirlpools and wraps, and a hyperbaric oxygen Diamond status and 14 nights. Corporate memberships go for chamber (the center is open even when Mykonos is not). more. It’s no exaggeration to call Balesin Island Club “Philippines’ While the club counts 1,200 members, Ongpin hopes numShangri-La.” Seven themed villages, patterned after Ongpin’s bers will swell to as many as 6,000 once an international marfavorite global destinations, are ringed by pristine white-sand beaches and lush vegetation. Accommodations and restaurants keting campaign kicks off, the bigger runway at Patnanungan is built and Manila airport congestion eases. Alphaland intends to are exquisitely furnished from the theme locales and from have sales offices in Hong Kong and Singapore. —J.A.P. artisans who live in their own cluster of huts on stilts. Credit Suisse. Helping entrepreneurs and businesses succeed in $VLD3DFLƟF Philippines’ 50 Richest BY GRACE CHUNG High on Development Some tycoons are big builders on earlier gains, while half fall back. JAY DIRECTO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES B risk economic growth in volatile political environment. Althe Philippines—nearly fredo Yao was down 26% as shares 7% this year—is expected in his soft drink maker, Macay, to carry into 2018 and is dipped 21% on news that Duterte helping magnates who was aiming to raise taxes on sugary enjoy a broad business reach. Espedrinks as part of a larger tax reform. cially benefiting are those tied to an Others just weren’t able to sustain infrastructure push by the Rodrigo sharp increases as in previous years. Duterte administration. Edgar Sia, for example, fell by No one captures the GDP boost 32% as shares in his DoubleDragon better than the country’s richest, Properties retreated. 92-year-old Henry Sy. His net worth Mining interests had a mixed has surged to a staggering $18 billion, year. The sector accounted for the up from $13.7 billion in 2016 and return of Philip Ang and Walter better than three times that of the Brown after a one-year hiatus but closest runner-up. SM Investments, saw a drop-off: Tomas Alcantara in which Sy holds a 54% stake, reof Alsons Consolidated Resources. capitalized to expand its retail malls Also missing is the fortune of at home and in China, and stock Alfonso Yuchengco of Rizal Cominvestors approved. Among other mercial Banking Corp., who died in new plays, the company bought into April at age 94. His estate has not a chain of dormitories to house a risyet been settled. ing student population. The benchmark Philippine Seven of the ten biggest dollar stock index was virtually flat over The sky’s the limit for Sy’s wealth, at $18 billion. gainers have sizable interests in the period while the peso slumped construction and property development. Other notable against the U.S. dollar on a surge in imports, thus paring gainers include David Consunji of DMCI Holdings, our converted valuations. Edgar Saavedra and Michael Cosiquien of Megawide These rankings are based on stock prices and exchange Construction and Ramon Ang of San Miguel (see p. 77). rates as of August 14. Private companies were valued by Newbie Eusebio Tanco debuts on the ranking as using comparisons with similar publicly traded companies. shares rose in his STI Education (see p. 76). Additional reporting by Ambika Behal, Caroline Chen, Sean However, half of the 50 saw their totals take a hit in a Kilachand, Anu Raghunathan, Jessica Tan and Katie Taylor. THE LIST 1 HENRY SY $18 BILLION S SM INVESTMENTS AGE: 92 2 JOHN GOKONGWEI JR. $5.5 BILLION T JG SUMMIT AGE: 91 3 ENRIQUE RAZON JR. $4.3 BILLION S INTERNATIONAL CONTAINER TERMINAL SERVICES AGE: 57 4 LUCIO TAN $4.2 BILLION T LT GROUP AGE: 83 5 JAIME ZOBEL DE AYALA $3.7 BILLION AYALA CORP. AGE: 83 6 DAVID CONSUNJI $3.68 BILLION S DMCI AGE: 95 7 GEORGE TY $3.6 BILLION T GT CAPITAL HOLDINGS AGE: 84 8 TONY TAN CAKTIONG $3.4 BILLION T JOLLIBEE AGE: 64 9 ANDREW TAN $2.5 BILLION T ALLIANCE GLOBAL AGE: 65 10 RAMON ANG $2.3 BILLION S SAN MIGUEL AGE: 63 11 MICHAEL COSIQUIEN AND EDGAR SAAVEDRA: MEGA BUILDERS Cofounders of the $342 million (2016 sales) infrastructure company Megawide saw their fortunes rise by more than 45%, buoyed by a 30% uptick in the stock. The 20-yearold company, which is handling construction of schools, the Mactan Cebu International Airport and the country’s first intermodal transportation hub, reported a rise in construction and airport revenues over the past year. Megawide is the largest private airport operator in the Philippines. In 2014, it won a 25-year contract for Mactan Cebu in partnership with Indian infrastructure giant GMR. It’s building a second terminal there and readying a bid for its first overseas project, in western India. The company also operates three solar power projects, supplying 100 megawatts of electricity to the national grid. LUCIO & SUSAN CO $1.8 BILLION PUREGOLD PRICE CLUB AGES: 62, 59 12 MANUEL VILLAR $1.65 BILLION STARMALLS AGE: 67 SUP MORE THAN 10% TDOWN MORE THAN 10% ÌNEW TO LIST 3RETURNEE EUSEBIO TANCO: NEWCOMER Shares in Eusebio Tanco’s key asset, STI Education Systems, soared 136% over the past year thanks to an expanding demand for courses in fields such as information and communication technology, and business and management. Holding company Tanco Group also has interests in shipping, property, energy and financial services. The debut listee studied economics at Ateneo de Manila University and got a master’s degree at London School of Economics. He started as a stockbroker. PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER Philippines’ 50 Richest THE LIST 13 INIGO & MERCEDES ZOBEL $1.6 BILLION AYALA CORP. AGES: 61, 60 14 ROBERT COYIUTO JR. $1.5 BILLION T PRUDENTIAL GUARANTEE & ASSURANCE AGE: 64 15 MERCEDES GOTIANUN $1.4 BILLION FILINVEST DEVELOPMENT AGE: 89 16 ROBERTO ONGPIN $1.15 BILLION ALPHALAND AGE: 80 RAMON ANG Ink in His Veins? R JULIAN ABRAM WAINWRIGHT/BLOOMBERG amon Ang is known for diversifying San Miguel Corp., which he runs, as well as for his sometimes pointed personal opinions. But Ang’s most recent move, entering talks to personally buy a controlling interest in the Inquirer Group, one of the Philippines’ biggest media firms and publisher of its most-read broadsheet, has raised eyebrows. Earlier this year the Philippine Daily Inquirer came under intense public criticism by President Rodrigo Duterte, who has railed against what he considers unfair, biased and inaccurate reporting on his administration and its war on drugs. “Inquirer, you are bulls---,” Duterte said at an oath-taking of government officials in March. His government has threatened tax-evasion charges and stepped up an eviction case against the owning Prieto family, involving their lease of government-owned land. But Ang speaks of Duterte as a “fast friend,” and a Rappler online report had the president praising Ang for becoming a billionaire from “his own hard work.” Ang, No. 10 on the list (and no relation to Betty Ang, No. 20, or Philip Ang, No. 50), nearly doubled his net worth to $2.3 billion, due largely to his Eagle Cement, which saw a favorable IPO in May amid an infrastructure push by Duterte’s government. 17 Tony La Vina, former dean of the Ateneo School of Government, argues there is no special relationship between Ang and Duterte and that their friendship is “not a longtime thing.” “He is a tycoon who supported him during the election but probably also supported other candidates. They are friends, but Ang was also a friend of President Aquino during his term.” Though the Inquirer deal caught most by surprise, Ang’s interest in media is not new. He already owns a portion of Solar TV network and is a minority owner of Nine Media Corp., which carries the CNN Philippines brand. His attempt to buy the country’s second-biggest broadcaster, GMA Network, failed in 2014. Jomar Lacson, head of equity research at ATR Asset Management, says an Inquirer investment makes business sense if Ang aims to create a portfolio of media companies with strong content that gives him leverage over advertisers. Randy David, sociology professor at the University of the Philippines and an Inquirer columnist, notes it “would become a different paper and lose credibility if it decided to enforce a policy of noncriticism of the administration. . . . I don’t think that Ang wants to acquire it in order to destroy it. He would not want to be remembered as the man who did that.” —Sunshine Lichauco de Leon EDUARDO COJUANGCO $1.1 BILLION SAN MIGUEL AGE: 82 18 DEAN LAO $1 BILLION T D&L INDUSTRIES AGE: 58 19 RICARDO PO SR. $980 MILLION CENTURY PACIFIC FOODS AGE: 86 20 BETTY ANG $880 MILLION MONDE NISSIN 21 EDGAR SIA II $820 MILLION T DOUBLEDRAGON PROPERTIES AGE: 40 22 OSCAR LOPEZ $760 MILLION T ABS-CBN CORP. AGE: 87 23 BEATRICE CAMPOS $650 MILLION UNITED LABORATORIES 24 CARLOS CHAN $620 MILLION S OISHI AGE: 76 SUP MORE THAN 10% TDOWN MORE THAN 10% ÌNEW TO LIST 3RETURNEE Philippines’ 50 Richest Money Into Mindanao BY GRACE CHUNG AND REBECCA FENG M artial law in Mindanao was extended in July to quell an escalating revolt by militants tied to the Islamic State. Occupying the city of Marawi, the rebel groups have battled with Philippine security forces since May, resulting in 775 deaths (mostly insurgents) and prompting some 23,000 residents to flee to nearby evacuation centers, according to the latest official numbers. Even before the violence of recent years established it as the IS epicenter in the Philippines, the sizable island was outside of the nation’s economic mainstream, constituting just 15% of GDP. But it remains rich in resources and potential. In a June report the World Bank noted, “Unless there is development in Mindanao, it is hard to see how the Philippines can achieve sustained and inclusive growth.” More than a dozen of the country’s 50 richest have interests in the area, but we’ve limited the names here to those involved in three key sectors; they are representative of the most productive or recently launched business activities. The bulk of the investments are in developments that include high-rise condos, office space and commercial properties. Through his Megaworld, Andrew Tan (No. 9), for one, is building out the 28-acre Davao Park District township, a first for the island, which will include a school and an upscale hospital. It’s expected to create a total of 100,000 direct and indirect jobs by 2020. THE LIST 25 ALFREDO YAO $600 MILLION T MACAY HOLDINGS AGE: 73 26 FREDERICK DY $520 MILLION SECURITY BANK AGE: 62 27 JACINTO NG $420 MILLION S ASIA UNITED BANK AGE: 75 28 JOSE & ROBBIE ANTONIO $400 MILLION S CENTURY PROPERTIES AGES: 70, 40 29 MICHAEL COSIQUIEN $385 MILLION S MEGAWIDE CONSTRUCTION AGE: 43 30 JORGE ARANETA $380 MILLION T ARANETA GROUP 31 EDGAR SAAVEDRA $375 MILLION S MEGAWIDE CONSTRUCTION AGE: 42 32 MARIANO TAN JR. $370 MILLION UNITED LABORATORIES AGE: 55 33 JON & MIKEL ABOITIZ $350 MILLION ABOITIZ EQUITY VENTURES AGES: 69, 62 34 MANUEL ZAMORA JR. $280 MILLION NICKEL ASIA AGE: 77 35 WILFRED STEVEN UYTENGSU JR. $240 MILLION ALASKA MILK AGE: 55 36 VIVIAN QUE AZCONA $230 MILLION MERCURY DRUG 37 ERIC RECTO $225 MILLION BEDFORDBURY DEVELOPMENT AGE: 54 SUP MORE THAN 10% TDOWN MORE THAN 10% ÌNEW TO LIST 3RETURNEE Philippines’ 50 Richest JOSE & ROBBIE ANTONIO: DYNAMIC DUO Robbie joins his father at No. 28 this year thanks to his Revolution Prefabricated, a maker of factory-built luxury homes in Asia and the West that cost an average of $70,000 and $120,000, respectively. In its first funding round in March the company raised $15.4 million from Silicon Valley VC firm 500 Startups and other angel investors, putting Revo’s valuation north of $250 million. To cater to the larger Southeast Asian market, Robbie says he’s working on affordable homes that would cost $25,000 to $30,000. The family’s flagship Century Properties, founded by Jose 30 years ago, is a developer of high-end real estate and has licensing deals with Forbes Media, Donald Trump, Giorgio Armani and Paris Hilton. It saw $130 million in revenue last year. Last November, President Duterte named Jose as special envoy of trade to the U.S. Vivian’s father, the storied founder of Mercury Drugs, the largest drugstore chain in the country, died in March at age 96. Following the liberation from the Japanese occupation, Mariano Que began selling medicine from a pushcart and opened his first pharmacy in Manila in 1945, providing affordable drugs in a city devastated by WWII. Today the chain spans 1,000 locations across the Philippines. Last year, we attributed the entire family’s fortune to Vivian, who has been running the business for years, because she owned a much larger stake than her father and her siblings. With Mariano’s passing, we’ve split the fortune, and now the figure for Vivian, $230 million (No. 36), reflects only her personal stake. PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER (BOTTOM) VIVIAN QUE AZCONA: LIFE AFTER MARIANO THE LIST BETTY ANG Shrouded in Secrecy B PATRICK WELSH FOR FORBES net income by 33% over the previous year to $105 etty Ang makes the Philippines’ richest for the 11th straight year and yet remains a most million, and revenue climbed by 30% over the same period to $985 million. elusive, mysterious tycoon. Listed as presiLeading the Monde Nissin board is Chairman dent of powerhouse Monde Nissin, the nation’s top Hartono Kweefanus, with a 28% stake. A brother, biscuit and noodle maker, she and her staff do not Vice Chairman Hoediono Kweefanus, is Ang’s respond to emails or phone calls, and the company husband and owns 3.1%; the two have six children. website makes no mention of her or its nineAmong the 12 other shareholders are Hartono and member board of directors. Even basic information Hoediono’s three female relatives, about her is uncertain, such as likely their sisters, who own a her age. This year, based on new combined 12.5%, and Chief information that her husband Executive Henry Soesanto, owner owns a stake, Forbes Asia is of 13.8%. He’s a family member combining the value of her and by marriage. her husband’s stakes, as we norAs for Khong Guan Indonemally do for spouses, giving the sia, the same Indonesian family couple an estimated fortune of members are listed on the boards $880 million and ranking them of its various units, but with the at No. 20. addition of the company’s foundThe privately held Manilaer—Hartono and Hoediono’s based company is actually father, Hidayat Darmono, also owned mainly by her husband’s known as Kwee Boen Twie. extended Indonesian family, Monde Nissin is expandaccording to its 2015 filing Hoediono Kweefanus and Betty Ang ing at home and abroad, so it’s with the Philippines’ Securities worth keeping a weather eye on the group. Last & Exchange Commission. The family also owns Khong Guan Biscuit Factory Indonesia—a similarly year, it joined with Indonesian food producer Nippon Indosari Corpindo to launch Sarimonde veiled operation. Foods; in 2015, it acquired the U.K.’s Quorn, a Monde Nissin’s Indonesian shareholders own meat-alternative outfit, and teamed up with Thai a combined 70.6% stake, with Ang and other juice maker Malee Sampran to launch Monde Filipinos owning the rest; she holds 24.85%. Forbes Malee Beverage. With plans to become a globAsia values private companies by comparing them ally diversified player, Monde Nissin has been with similar listed companies. With the country’s contemplating an initial public offering since food industry booming over the past decade, the 2015, originally planning to raise $300 million to rising value of that stake propelled her wealth from $500 million. If the listing happens, much of the an estimated $100 million in 2007 to $905 million mystery surrounding Ang and the company may in 2015 and $800 million last year. The company hasn’t filed its 2016 report yet, but in 2015 it boosted finally be solved. —Jane A. Peterson FOR METHODOLOGY AND ALL BIOS, GO TO FORBES.COM/PHILIPPINES. 38 JOSE MA. CONCEPCION $220 MILLION CONCEPCION INDUSTRIAL 39 BIENVENIDO TANTOCO SR. $190 MILLION S SSI GROUP AGE: 96 40 P.J. LHUILLIER $180 MILLION CEBUANA LHUILLIER AGE: 72 41 FELIPE GOZON $170 MILLION GMA NETWORK AGE: 77 42 MENARDO JIMENEZ $165 MILLION GMA NETWORK AGE: 84 43 WALTER BROWN $160 MILLION ATOK-BIG WEDGE AGE: 78 44 GILBERTO DUAVIT $ 155 MILLION T GMA NETWORK AGE: 82 45 EUSEBIO TANCO $150 MILLION Ì STI EDUCATION SYS. HOLDINGS AGE: 68 46 JULIETTE ROMUALDEZ $145 MILLION BANCO DE ORO AGE: 81 47 MICHAEL ROMERO $135 MILLION GLOBALPORT 900 AGE: 44 48 ERRAMON ABOITIZ $130 MILLION ABOITIZ EQUITY VENTURES AGE: 61 49 LUIS VIRATA $125 MILLION T NICKEL ASIA AGE: 63 50 PHILIP ANG $120 MILLION NICKEL ASIA AGE: 76 SUP MORE THAN 10% TDOWN MORE THAN 10% ÌNEW TO LIST 3RETURNEE 160 years of entrepreneurial drive. 48 years of experience in the region. 20 locations DFURVV$VLD3DFLƟF 1 integrated bank to deliver expertise to help you achieve your needs. 2017 awards received • Best Bank – Wealth Management in Asia Euromoney Awards for Excellence • Best Bank – Financing in Asia Euromoney Awards for Excellence • Number 1 – All-Asia Sales Team Institutional Investor • Number 1 – All-Asia Trading Team Institutional Investor Find out how our award-winning services can help you: credit-suisse.com/apac FORBES ASIA LICENSEE COVERS Around Asia In Forbes: FORBES INDONESIA AUGUST Candra Ciputra, eldest son of a venerable Indonesian rich lister, leads his clan’s eponymous property firm onto the magazine’s annual 50 Best of the Best companies list. (forbesindonesia.com) FORBES THAILAND AUGUST Clockwise from front: Jareeporn Jarukornsakul, group CEO of WHA Corp, cofounded the developer of warehouse-distribution centers that now exceeds $1 billion in market cap; Thida Kaewbootta, managing director of the Srisawad consumer finance business founded by her Thai rich-lister father; Ariya Jutanugarn, this year ranked the world’s No. 1 lady golfer; and Suphajee Suthampun, an IT industry vet who took over as CEO of hospitality firm Dusit Thani. (forbesthailand.com) FORBES INDIA SEPTEMBER 1 Amazon India boss Amit Agarwal counts up gains from bringing the multinational’s Prime delivery option to the country’s fierce e-commerce battle. (forbesindia.com) FORBES KOREA AUGUST Han Tae-Keun is CEO of closely held Air Busan, which claims the highest profitability in the nation’s competitive but insular battle among low-cost air carriers. (forbeskorea.com) SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 83 Forbes Life Electric Avenue Three Chinese car companies are taking over Formula E racing. BY PAMELA AMBLER F ormula E, the electric-race-car event, wrapped up its third season in July, and the Chinese team Techeetah claimed its first E-Prix victory, a significant achievement. Teams are now gearing up for season four of the global Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) Formula E Championship, to kick off in Hong Kong. Racing will take place along the scenic Central Harborfront beginning December 2. Adding to the excitement, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche announced commitments to join the series in season six, signaling a seismic shift within the auto industry toward electric. Of the ten participating international teams, two are Chinese-owned. A third, Faraday Future, a California-based automotive startup that surfaced in 2015, is heavily bankrolled by Chinese consumer-electronics conglomerate LeEco. The company, known as the Netflix of China, is undergoing financial turmoil at the moment, but that hasn’t put a damper on Faraday’s racing ambitions. The three teams have very different approaches to the motorsport. Techeetah belongs to SECA, a sports-and-entertainment company based in Shanghai. SECA owns football clubs and streaming rights to sporting events but it isn’t so involved on the technical side. “They’re interested in the growth of the series, they’re interested in growing a new sport,” says team principal Mark Preston, who has 15 years’ experience in F1 with McLaren and Arrows. While Techeetah’s powertrain is built by Renault in Paris, Preston believes that having a Chinese brand in the series helps further promote electric vehicles (EVs) to consumers. “If China becomes the leader in EVs,” he says, “it’s going to drive down the cost of batteries and technology needed to make EVs more prevalent around the world.” China is already leading the way. In May alone there were 40,000 new EV registrations, a 49% increase over the same month last year. Twice the number of electric cars were sold in 2016 in China than in the U.S., with manufacturers like Warren Buffett-backed BYD, BAIC and Zhejiang Geely leading the charge. Geely made an all-cash purchase of Volvo from Ford for $1.3 billion in 2010, the largest overseas acqui84 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 sition by a Chinese automaker. Volvo recently announced all new models will include an electric motor beginning in 2019. The decision makes the Swedish giant the first major car brand to end production of pure combustion engines. Chinese companies are throwing their weight behind battery power on all fronts. Private equity group China Media Capital, the parent company of SECA, has officially become a shareholder in FIA Formula E. “There will be some races on the mainland in the near future . . . definitely it’s coming,” says Preston. The other Chinese contender in the electric race is NextEV, better known as NIO, a road car brand with an unusual story. It emerged on the scene when it debuted its supercar, the EP9. With 1,360 horsepower, the vehicle quickly broke five records for the fastest lap car in the world. The team has evolved since season one, when it was named Team China Racing. Prior to 2016, the NIO brand produced no vehicles, but it has since manufactured ten EP9s out of its factory in Nanjing, with six more expected to be delivered. “We have no history in terms of ICEs [internal combustion engines], hybrids. We are purely electric-vehicle manufacturers,” says Gerry Hughes, team principal of NextEV. The startup unveiled its seven-seater SUV at the 2017 Shanghai auto show. The car will officially be launched in the fourth quarter. “We’re just on the cusp of becoming a mass producer of electric vehicles. CHARGED UP PHOTOPQR/NICE MATIN/MAXPP/NEWSCOM Racing without fumes: Team Techeetah competing in Monaco in May. Provisionally in China and going global. But certainly starting in China.” For NextEV the ES9 is meant to bridge the gap between race cars and road cars, because ultimately NIO aims to be a mass-market, user-friendly enterprise. “The EP9, that is a very specific vehicle which was a brand-awareness tool for the NIO brand,” says Hughes. Like any other forward-looking car company, NIO has also ventured into self-driving technology, with both the EP9 as well as its concept car, Eve. “Autonomous technology is very much a part of NIO’s DNA,” says Hughes. The company counts internet giant Tencent, search engine Baidu and PC maker Lenovo among its many deep-pocketed investors. And with the Chinese government on its side in encouraging alternative, sustainable energy approaches, NIO may be poised to take on Tesla, with its first consumer car set to go into production in 2018. Formula E allows car companies like NIO to showcase their electric technology on a global scale. For the time being, however, batteries don’t have enough energy capacity to cover the distance of a full race. Thus each team has two vehicles, with a pit stop to switch cars, as in years past. Hughes points out that a few car companies have shied away from the series for this very reason. He describes it as “range anxiety.” “BMW have openly stated they don’t want to be involved in the championship until they can have just one car in the race,” he says. E-Prix will return to Hong Kong with a doubleheader for a second year on the urban circuit as the EV revolution continues to charge ahead. F SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 85 Forbes Life Social Security Sumptuous villas in Chiang Mai come with all the amenities, including the ultimate in home bunker arrangements. BY JIM DOBSON O n my recent visit to Thailand I came across a spectacular new property under development that is the first of its kind in Asia. Comprising six high-end luxury villas, the Sanctum project incorporates the ultimate in safety for its owners, complete with private, high-tech nuclear fallout shelters. Located in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and positioned along a greenbelt zone adjacent to a national park, the property will never be near new developments and promises complete privacy. It is conveniently located 7 miles from Chiang Mai Airport in a rural location only minutes from the bustling city. To achieve the ultimate in safety, security and privacy, the designers positioned the villas back to back to create a rectangular space. Designers added 22-foot-high green walls to surround the villas securing the boundaries of the development. Each villa is designed with steel-reinforced concrete walls, earthquake-resistant structures and bulletproof security-glass windows. A stunning state-of-the-art security system also protects each home. The villas also utilize solar power to reduce environmental impact, eco-spray foam was used for the roof insulation, natural ventilation systems were designed around the villa, and palm trees were positioned to shade the villa and minimize climate control requirements. The exterior walls, built using hydraulic lime render, were developed from local materials, and earth pigments were integrated eliminating the need for paint. As the lime cures, it absorbs CO2 and hardens into limestone, creating an easily maintained exterior. Interior walls were made of natural clay that will never require painting. A grey water-irrigation system, a compost bin and numerous fruit trees in the gardens are included with every villa. The villa’s floor-to-ceiling glass windows look over a sea of greenery and lush tropical gardens, high ceilings, an infinity saltwater swimming pool cascades from the first floor and a skylight floods each villa with natural light. A spa, gym and home theater come as standard in the Sanctum villa, and outdoor soaking tubs with bio-alcohol fireplaces adjoin the bedrooms. 86 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 But it is perhaps the most timely addition of a fully equipped concrete nuclear-fallout shelter that has buyers excited. Built into the ground floor of each villa, with its own HEPA air-filtration system, the shelter doubles as a home spa or third bedroom, and is made of the most advanced designs from Hardened Structures, one of the top American engineering companies specializing in custom bomb shelters. The villas also feature a unique panic room that can be used as a private office and is built into the master bedroom, complete with reinforced concrete walls as well as a roof escape hatch. Other advanced security features include an IR detection system to monitor the perimeter, a centralized alarm system monitoring the property, motion light sensors and a CCTV system with monitors inside the villa and on the owner’s tablet. Even the entrance gate to the villa is made of solid steel with metal mesh, while the garage door runs on hydraulics made of steel and mesh. Premium-package villas are furnished with numerous luxury features such as a four-car garage, and a home spa room with steam room, rain shower, massage tables and flotation tank. The Imperial Package includes a stone kitchen from Italian designer Minotticucine, German Gaggenau appliances, SONOS speaker systems throughout the home, as well as entire home control via smartphone or iPad. Sheldon Augustyn was the designer, along with architect Klitthi Hiranras and interior designers Hatainan Mahayodkul and Apichat Pankratuk, who made designs fit the regulations and put the final touches on the project. Augustyn tells me, “The concept of Sanctum is unique. Our vision ad- DR. STRANGELOVE SLEPT HERE “Thailand is a very safe place—right now, that is. The future is always changing, and we wanted to be prepared should it become not so safe.” heres to three essential constituents: security, sustainability, luxury.” He adds, “Thailand is a very safe place—right now, that is. The future is always changing, and we wanted to be prepared should it become not so safe. But regardless, we feel that your home is your castle, and your castle should be secure, right? So we designed a luxury villa that is very secure, without using unsightly bars on the windows. We did not want to live in a jail.” F Adapted from Forbes.com. SEPTEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 87 THOUGHTS ON Inventions —LAUREN WILLIG “I JUST INVENT, THEN WAIT UNTIL MAN COMES AROUND TO NEEDING WHAT I’VE INVENTED.” “An inventor is a person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.” —AMBROSE BIERCE “COME QUICKLY—I AM TASTING THE STARS!” “The thing itself, the first thing, will never do us alone. We must be elaborating, improving, poeticizing.” —DOM PÉRIGNON —SEBASTIAN BARRY —BUCKMINSTER FULLER “From the dawn of time, whenever humanity has wanted to know more . . . we have learned primarily by tinkering.” “I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.” —CURT GABRIELSON “Many of the younger generation know my name in a vague way. . . . They think I am a nonperson, just a name that signifies a tangled web of pipes or wires or strings that suggest machinery.” —RUBE GOLDBERG “TO INVENT, YOU NEED A GOOD IMAGINATION AND A PILE OF JUNK.” —AGATHA CHRISTIE —THOMAS EDISON “The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy.” —MATTHEW B. CRAWFORD “Mark the spirit of invention everywhere, thy rapid patents, thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising. See from their chimneys how tall the flame-fires stream.” “Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.” —MARY SHELLEY —WALT WHITMAN “REBELS REVEL IN REWRITING REALITY’S RESTRICTIONS.” —RYAN LILLY FINAL THOUGHT “I FORM THE LIGHT AND CREATE DARKNESS; I BRING PROSPERITY AND CREATE DISASTER. I, THE LORD, DO ALL THESE THINGS.” “Imagination provides the wings for life’s airplanes; work, the motor.” —ISAIAH 45:7 —B.C. FORBES SOURCES: THE TIMES BOOK OF QUOTATIONS; THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY, BY AMBROSE BIERCE; INVENTIONS, BY RUBE GOLDBERG; TINKERING, BY CURT GABRIELSON; SHOP CLASS AS SOULCRAFT, BY MATTHEW B. CRAWFORD; AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, BY AGATHA CHRISTIE; THE GARDEN INTRIGUE, BY LAUREN WILLIG. 88 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2017 CLOCKWISE FROM TOP CENTER: ART COLLECTION/ALAMY; HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; CULTURE CLUB/GETTY IMAGES; HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES; JOHN LINDSAY/AP; BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES “They were a strange and mercantile people, these Americans. One never knew what they might come up with next.” CLASSIQU E 7147 HISTORY IS STILL BEING WRITTEN ... N A P O L É O N B O N A PA R T E ( 1 7 6 9 - 1 8 2 1 ) I C O N I C B R E G U E T C L I E N T – W W W. B R E G U E T. C O M
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