Two Indonesians named in billionaires club
JAKARTA (JP): Both are 53 and both sit atop business empires built solely on kretek, the sweet smelling clove-flavored cigarettes. On Friday, Rachman Halim and Putera Sampoerna were named among the world's 538 billionaires by the leading U.S. business magazine Forbes.
Rachman, head of the Wonowidjojo clan who owns the Gudang Garam tobacco company, ranks 292nd with an estimated net worth of US$1.7 billion; Putera, who owns and runs the Sampoerna business group, is 387th with a net worth of $1.3 billion.
Forbes' latest edition, which hit newsstands on Friday, published the annual list of the world's billionaires. (The list is also available at www.forbes.com)
Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates retains the title of "the richest man on the planet" even though his net worth dropped from $63 billion to $58.7 billion over the past year.
Gudang Garam "continues to thrive in Indonesia's shaky economy" with sales up 38 percent in the first quarter of 2000, according to a brief synopsis on Rachman at Forbes' website.
"He travels by helicopter, plays golf and doesn't get out of mysterious East Java much. He takes care of most of the business operations from the factory floors," the magazine said.
Putera is described as University of Houston-educated, whose Sampoerna saw sales up by 59 percent in the last quarter of 2000.
"He spends much of his time in Singapore," according to Forbes.
Both Gudang Garam and Sampoerna are listed at the Jakarta Stock Exchange, making evaluation of their net worth easier than most other Indonesian family-run conglomerates.
This is the first time that Rachman has been entered in the list of billionaires, but not for his clan. In 1999, the Wonowidjojo family's net worth was put at $3 billion and in 1998 it was $2.1 billion.
For Putera, this is the first time that he or his Sampoerna company has been included in the list.
Two Indonesian names who appeared in 1999 and 1998 but are missing from this year's list are the family of former president Soeharto, and Eka Tjipta Widjaja, owner of the diversified Sinar Mas Group.
The Soehartos' net worth was put by Forbes at $1.7 billion in 1999 and $4 billion in 1998; Eka's riches were estimated at $2.5 billion in 1999 and $4 billion in 1998.
Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing was named by Forbes as the richest man in Asia among the region's 73 billionaires, according to Associated Press.
Several moguls in the region were knocked down a notch or two by the bursting tech bubble and stock market turbulence.
Masayoshi Son, founder of Japanese Internet holding company Softbank, was worth $76 billion in mid-2000 and is now worth just $5.6 billion. Masayoshi ranked 55th on the list. Last year he was eighth.
Li made his fortune in property, shipping and telecommunications to name a few. His wealth grew from $11.3 billion last year to $12.6 billion, the magazine said.
Li ranked 18th on the overall list.
Japan's Yasuo Takei is the second richest Asian and ranked 37th on the list. India's software king, Azim Premji, is the third richest in the region followed by Japan's Kyosuke Kinoshita, Yoshitaka Fukuda, Nasatoshi Ito, Hong Kong's Patrick Wang, Malaysia's Robert Kwok, Singapore's Ng Teng Fong and India's Dhirubhai Ambani.
Of the billionaires in the region, three are from Australia, two from China, 13 from Hong Kong, four from India, two from Indonesia, 26 from Japan, four from Malaysia, one from New Zealand, three from the Philippines, six from Singapore, two from South Korea, five from Taiwan and two from Thailand.