S. Wanandi, Good Indonesian Businessman in the ‘98 Crisis
Posted January 30th, 2009 by admin No Comments »
There are many conglomerates in Indonesia that they generally come from ethnic Chinese. Many people doubt their nationalism. This is related to the economic crisis that occurred in Indonesian, 1998. Many of them fled and left Indonesia with million-dollar debts left behind. But many of them also have good nationalism by taking action to overcome the economic crisis.
One of them is Sofyan Wanandi. He is an Indonesian nouveau riche and well known figure both as an entrepreneurship and politician. Together with his brother Jusuf Wanandi, he has built the Gemala group into a diversified conglomerate with business ranging from finance and insurance to pharmaceuticals. He is also known as a former anti – communist activist.
When the crisis came in 1998, he no longer had debts. He consolidates his businesses a year before the crisis and had settled his debts by selling several companies. So, Gemala Group was relatively unscathed by the crisis, while many other conglomerates took a fall. Read the rest of this entry »