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 explain the shape of the game 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 in the region.

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.
2. Coming soon.

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