The Asian Conglomerate Series

Anyone who has grown up in Asia has lived in the shadow of the great conglomerates. Conglomerates are the norm here; most of the products and services we consume or interact with are owned by a small group of companies, and controlled by a smaller group of tycoons.

What can we learn from studying such conglomerates, or such businesspeople?

The Asian Conglomerate Series attempts answer these questions seriously, from the perspective of an operator. Most writing on Asian businesses do not take the forms of business present in the region very seriously (for good reason — something we shall examine together over the course of the series). And much of the writing uses Western lenses — typically with an undertone of smug judgment — to evaluate tycoons in the region.

Some of that judgment is merited. But a lot of it is unfair. Business expertise is typically a response to the business ecosystem that one finds oneself in. We’ll look at these businesses on their own terms, taking into account the political dynamics and (oftentimes colonial) history of the markets that these tycoons operate in. We will not assume shareholder primacy, nor will we assume stakeholder capitalism. Most importantly, we do not intend to measure Asian conglomerates according to some imaginary standard of idealised business.

Goals

The goal of this series is two-fold:

• The most important goal is to make legible the paths many of these business families took to build large, enduring franchises.
• The second goal, no less important that the first, is to explain the shape of business in Asia, such that a) you may pursue it for yourself, if you live in the region, or b) you don’t get blindsided if you decide to do business here.

Prior Reading

Readers should read the precursor series, titled ‘Power in Business’, before starting on this one. That mini-series consists of three essays, designed to explain how business can be done without rule of law:

1. What is Power? (members only) — A simple definition of power, and a look at a number of cases to demonstrate power in action in business.
2. How to Use Power (members only) — What is the skill of power, really, and how do you get better at it? We walk through a case about Y Combinator’s use of power to discuss how power is built, used, and traded.
3. Power and Asian Business (members only) — Why it is necessary to talk about power when we examine business in an Asian context.

Also of interest are The Chinese Businessman Paradox (another series) and the case sequence on Capital Allocation — which explicates the gold standard with which Western conglomerates are measured against.

Essays in The Asian Conglomerate Series

Here are the essays in the Asian Conglomerate Series. The series is currently ongoing:

1. The Gambling King (members only) — We open the series with the story of Stanley Ho, the erstwhile gambling king of Macau. Members are expected to read these two cases and think about the concepts or themes present — as a set up for the major concepts we will examine throughout this series. Attached cases: Stanley Ho’s Lucrative War, How Stanley Ho Built a Gambling Empire.
2. The Study of Asian Tycoons — What can we learn from the study of Asian Conglomerates, and the small group of tycoons that run them? We walk through the goals of the series, and then some themes from the Stanley Ho cases.
3. The Story of Samsung (members only) — The second case of the series is the founding story of Samsung. How did South Korea’s largest, most prominent chaebol a) become so large, and b) exert so much power over the country’s politics and economy? Attached case: The Samsung Risk.
4. Let’s Talk Corruption (members only) — The elephant in the room. How should we think about business skill, when corruption is so pervasive and ever-present in nearly all the businesses we discuss in this series? How do we think about corruption when we talk about Asian conglomerates and Asian tycoons? Attached case: Lee Kun-hee’s Corruption Trial.
5. Activist Investing in Asian Conglomerates — Given what we now understand about corruption, we can take a look at how Asian conglomerates and Asian tycoons play in young capital markets with pliable governments and regulators. We do this to introduce two concepts: first, that there are certain wacky things you should expect when tycoons float equities in their respective home markets; second, that there are certain common patterns across the capital structures of their companies. Attached case: Activist Investing in Asia.
6. How Reliance Won (members only) — This is the third case that covers the rise of a tycoon. We examine the life and times of Dhirubhai Ambani, who turned a polyester trading business into an empire, eventually becoming the richest family in Asia. This is the last instalment before we start examining answers to the questions we’ve raised over the past five parts. Members are expected to go through the three cases — on Stanley Ho, B.C. Lee, and Dhirubhai Ambani — and come up with some patterns for themselves. Attached case: The Rise of Dhirubhai Ambani.
7. How to Become an Asian Tycoon — Every Asian tycoon becomes a tycoon in the exact same way. This is the first essay that lays out some common patterns to all the tycoons we’ve examined so far ... and all the tycoons we’re going to examine together in the coming weeks.
8. Coming soon.

You may also view the full list of published cases here: Commoncog Case Library: Asian Conglomerates Concept Sequence.

Originally published 02 February 2025, last updated 07 April 2025.