Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and South East Asia

Description

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

Joe Studwell is the editor of the China Economic Quarterly (www.theceq.com). He lived and worked as a freelance journalist in Hong Kong and Beijing from 1991 to 2000. Upon reading Asian Godfathers, Cambridge University invited him to take up a PhD which he is now studying. He is also author of The China Dream (Profile, ISBN 9781861979487).

A first-class study ... the product of an original, inquiring mind. * Sunday Times * The romp around the region's pleasure domes is a blast. * Asian Wall Street Journal * You badly need to read this book. Joe Studwell...should be named chief myth-buster for Asian business...his tone is ironic without being cruel...his mythbusting is as merciless as it is enlightening...Studwell skewers myths with equal passion and panache. * Financial Times *