ABSTRACT
In important new areas of business like aviation, electronics, financial services or tourism, the super rich of the Asean countries have added to the wellsprings of their earlier wealth: trade finance, trading houses, plantations and raw commodities. Southeast Asia’s tremendous expansion bucketed a lot of money into its capital and commodity exchanges, but the wealth did not much deepen or diversify those markets. Southeast Asia’s commercial crucibles continue to depend on government favouritism both direct, and indirect. In the indirect category fall many of the investment incentives designed to lure outsiders to set up plants in exchange for another form of free-riding. The transition from the archetypal, high-ceilinged colonial office, ceiling fans twirling lazily overhead, to corporate conglomerates headquartered in soaring steel towers thus occurred with astonishing rapidity. Southeast Asia’s squat, unimaginative caterpillars were turning into globally competitive butterflies imbued with Western management ethics.
