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THE best Asian budget airline story I’ve heard was in 2006, while taking a short walk in Pakistan’s Hindu Kush to visit the old princely state of Chitral, a Shangri-la where Osama bin Laden is said to be enjoying the alpine air and hospitality
He'd rather be nude: how an expat found peace and business success
IN AN ERA of Enrons and HIHs, Opes Primes and Chartwells, an unusual French-born businessman in India may well be the corporate antidote for this age of greed
Honey, disconnect the phone, I'm back in Soviet Central Asia
SHE'S young and glamorous, and rich too. Though still only in her mid-30s, there seems nothing Gulnara Karimov can't do
Thailand Looks for Return to Growth
IT WAS a simple act but, for Asia, an unusual one. But if it catches on, it could mark a new era for how economic policy is executed in coup-plagued Thailand
CHATTING with Ajith Cabraal, the amiable governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, in his lofty eyrie above Colombo, one could be forgiven that he’s presiding over some approximation of a Switzerland-sur-tropique
Whatever happened to Sir Richard Evans?
Eric Ellis tracks down the former chairman of BAE Systems amid the wintry steppes of Kazakhstan, where he is trying to introduce Western notions of corporate governance
A Tell-All Book
About Rupert Murdoch
Few of Rupert Murdoch’s former employees are eager to write about him. Likewise, few of his publications are eager to review a book about him. This review was turned down by the Far Eastern Economic Review, which is part of Murdoch-owned Dow Jones, after it was initially accepted. Nor was it reviewed by the Murdoch-owned Australian or the Australian Literary Review
Dubai's rags-to-riches miracle built on the toil of exploited foreign workers
Today, in the Arabian emirate of Dubai, the great and good of the Australian Football League will slap the backs of local expatriates and home-grown potentates in a dollar-drenched celebration of all things Australian, Dubaian and corporate
Afghanistan's Central Bank numbers crunched by Indian accountant
WE ALL know Iraq’s bad but to hear many experts tell it, Afghanistan is the genuine headache of the age, military and economic
Farewell to Asia’s greatest kleptocrat
The death of Indonesia’s former dictator may spur attempts to recover the loot accumulated by his family
Keeping it in the family
After a decade of concealing their enormous wealth, the Soeharto offspring
suddenly have found themselves back in the limelight
The curtain finally falls on Suharto, with the actors still performing their roles
Singapore: Libel case a test for Murdoch
Dow Jones brought some unwanted baggage with it
The most pressing priority for Pakistan after today's brutal termination of the Bhutto dynasty is to stop this difficult nation plunging into civil war
Inside Samruk, Kazakhstan's new state holding company
Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev,
has decreed the creation of a state holding company, roughly on
Singaporean/Malaysian lines, to oversee
and rationalize the country’s lucrative but inchoate collection of state-owned
companies and foster corporate governance. Eric Ellis reports on a confrontation
of cultures
Interview with Sir Richard Evans, Samruk chairman
A British corporate warhorse, Sir Richard Evans, has been hired to pull the Samruk operation together
PERHAPS the best way to view Corporate Afghanistan — there’s a term you don’t often hear — is to regard it as a never-ending spigot draining sovereign wealth funds into the world’s biggest tax haven
Unease grows between Jakarta and Singapore
Resentment and envy still appear to underpin a testy relationship, writes Eric Ellis
In a sorry end to a glittering career, Australian cardboard-box king Richard Pratt was caught price-fixing
How business thrives in Pakistan's Epaulette Empire
PAKISTAN'S military dictator Pervez Musharraf has declared martial law, effectively mounting a coup on himself
Splintering Asia's glass ceiling
Choosing the region's top businesswomen is easy, writes Eric Ellis, but where are all the Australians?
Web of cash, power and cronies
Singapore isn't just skilled at mandatory executions of drug traffickers, running an excellent airport and selling cameras on Orchard Road.
It also does a useful trade keeping Burma's military rulers and their cronies afloat
More chaos than calm in eye of the Tigers
City Life - Colombo
Peace would be a better business plan for the island of a hundred ministers...
Tea with the Tigers becomes a turbulent brew
Humbled but not off the Flight Path
A failed $9 billion takeover bid in May by a private-equity group for Australian flag carrier Qantas— which would have been the biggest deal in aviation history—seems to have humbled the airline’s pugnacious CEO, Geoff Dixon
Sri Lankan tea maker Dilmah is taking a leaf from the wine industry to label its beverage as high-end and chic
Singapore cashes in on a raft of graft
The island state has laid out the welcome mat for Jakarta's dubious tycoons
The island state that wishes it could be towed to less murky waters
City Life - War has already been declared in Iran — between Coca-Cola and the theocrats
The Shah is Dead. Long live the Shah — and I don’t mean Reza Pahlavi, the 45-year-old pretender to his late father’s Peacock Throne, whom many in Washington would like to install atop this most vexatious nation
Sanctions? Coke and Pepsi found a way around them and are battling for market share in Tehran with local Zamzam Cola
India: just as messy as it has always been
Booming, business-mad India is not the full story, as Eric Ellis discovers, to his cost
It's difficult enough getting into the secretive theocracy that is Iran, but once inside, you enter a world locked in the past and riddled with corruption and cronyism
Cold, lonely, annoyed, uninformed and without toiletries in the heart of the Axis of Evil
Ferry expensive journey
Kangaroo Island is in the thrall of an overpriced monopoly ferry service to and
from the South Australian mainland
Hot spots, pot shots and gold pots for the brazen and the bold
Compile a fake CV, head for a war zone, and a fortune in taxpayers' dollars can be yours
The Iron Lady at the Heart of Pakistan's New Economy
IT WAS France’s wartime resistance leader and later President Charles de Gaulle who lamented how difficult effective governance was in a nation where there are 246 varieties of cheese. Pakistan’s new central banker Dr Shamshad Akhtar would sympathise
The Pakistan-Afghanistan border is awash with arms and drugs – and traces of Osama bin Laden
High stakes for Packer in Singapore
SO DO James Packer and friends have the elusive "wow factor"?
Iran's car industry stuck in 1970s gear
Petrol's cheap and business is booming. But US sanctions still hurt
Five years after the war, Kabul is showing signs of economic life. But making money there is still risky business
With books about George Washington arrayed on a shelf behind him in his office in Kabul, Afghan President Hamid Karzai talked to FORTUNE recently about the nation-building challenges that still confront his country five years after the fall of the Taliban
If there's such a thing as the right way to topple a democratically elected government, then Thailand’s generals might be just the strongmen to teach that lesson
Thai adventure backfires on Singapore Inc
The fallout from the Thai coup is yet to hit Singapore's Madame Ho
A weak president, untouchable warlords and a resurgent Taliban are dooming Afghanistan to an endless cycle of violence and corruption, funded by Australian aid and protected by our troops, as Eric Ellis reports from Kabul
Afghan bank takes a gamble on success
Life's a bit of a lottery for some depositors in the strife-torn country
Tehran’s top banker looks to the future
Ebrahim Sheibany is governor of Iran’s central bank, a position he has held for three years. He tells Eric Ellis in Tehran that as far as economic policy is concerned, little has changed, despite the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president
Afghanistan Gets Back To Business
The country’s newly revitalized banking system throws up colourful characters and eccentric approaches to marketing. But overseeing it all is a rigorous central banker with solid US commercial banking experience
Whether or not Iran is building nuclear weapons, its auto industry, the largest in the Middle East, is learning how to cope with privation—and planning for worse.
The first democratically elected Afghan president suggests he won't run again -- and gives a frank assessment of his first five years on the job
India's bureaucracy is a bummer for the boom
Economic growth is yet to improve the ground-level conditions for business in India
In Kabul, a feature window and a bakery illustrate Afghanistan’s decline
An Iraqi-born, Australian economist’s family may have been shot in revenge for his advisory work
The Proton, Malaysia's national car, is losing market share. Can the company be weaned from its government subsidies?
Biographies of Nelson Mandela, Richard Nixon, and Che Guevara sit alongside tomes from ex-Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca and celebrity chef Nigella Lawson on the bookshelves in Abdullah Badawi’s study in Putrajaya.
Malaysia's grandiose economic policies of the past have created a headache for Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi
Singapore's budget airlines; Low Cost, High Competition
Chong Phit Lian, the new CEO of Jetstar Asia, a Singapore budget airline, used to run Singapore's mint. That's the last time she was awash in cash
Qantas' Jetstar Asia headache dogs Dixon
MADAME Chong Phit Lian, Geoff Dixon's new right-hand stewarding Qantas' Big Asian Adventure, Jetstar Asia, used to run Singapore's government mint. Unfortunately for Dixon and Qantas shareholders that's probably the last time Madame Chong was awash in cash. The struggling budget airline, 45 per cent owned by Qantas, is proving anything but a licence to print money
Singapore's Temasek is rich, powerful and on the prowl. But it didn't count on the latest backlash from Thailand
Its a good thing Sol Trujillo secured one of Australia's highest executive pay packages--about $8 million--when he signed on last year as CEO of its biggest company, Telstra. At least he's being handsomely compensated for the personal attacks he has weathered since joining the government-controlled telephone company
The US fears a P&O terror takeover, but Middle East petrodollars are welcome in Australia
The Americans have put the mess back into Mesopotamia, says an Iraqi-Australian economist after trying to help the reconstruction of his birthplace
Is Ho Ching Losing Her Touch?
The Battle of the (Very Hot) City-States
After 15 years on the lam, with $1.5bn missing and facing 18 charges from one of the biggest corporate scandals in Australian history, Abraham Goldberg finally wants to come home
Wizards of Oz, a bank in Australia makes a bid for London’s stock exchange
Eric Ellis on the background to the hanging in Singapore last week of an Australian drug-dealer
Cobbling a Media Empire in Kabul
Saad Mohseni works the departure at Dubai’s Terminal 2 like a Davos pro
Hang Democracy, Let's Trade
Singaporeans don't like to be reminded they do business with Burmese narco-traffickers,
and admit they don't mind punishing the innocent to preserve law and order
On the run
Abe Goldberg has gone to ground since last week's
astonishing expose. Now Polish authorities are determined to see that justice is
done
Gotcha, Goldberg!
The one that got away:
When Melbourne rag trade magnate Abraham Goldberg disappeared, $1.5bn went
missing with him. How we tracked down Australia's biggest corporate fugitive
Now that John Howard has a strong rapport with the Indonesian president, it's time he got chummy with SBY's more influential deputy
Islamabad's long-delayed sale of state
telecom operator PTCL should be encouragement -- and a warning
Musharraf to investors: ‘Help me fight terrorism’
President Pervez Musharraf wants to court foreign investors.
Our second annual ranking of the smartest, most successful, most influential business leaders from South Korea to Saudi Arabia
Indonesia v Newmont
The gold-mining company is accused of poisoning villagers. Will this be a test
case for the country's judicial reform?
The First Women Bank of Pakistan may well be every banker’s dream
Finally, Some Good News for Pakistan
Pervez Musharraf is a happy man. The Pakistani President finds himself where no previous leader of his country has been before: running a boom economy. In the past four quarters, according to Pakistan’s Finance Ministry, GDP growth has averaged 8.4%—“the second-biggest economic expansion in Asia after China,” Musharraf crows.
Foster's may be Australian for beer, as the ads would have it, but CEO Trevor O’Hoy is intent on making the company Australian for wine
Sri Lanka’s efforts to rebuild after the
tsunami have been slowed by
bureaucracy and renewed ethnic tensions. Can President Kumaratunga
use the disaster to transform the island’s political culture?
A reporter’s account of one personal mission
Interview with President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka
Blackjack in Singapore? Poker in Pyongyang? Casino operators are hoping to cash in on gambling’s new frontier
Red opportunity makes Singapore complacent again
The name Chen Jiulin doesn't roll off the Western tongue in quite the same manner as Nick Leeson but many Singaporeans see awkward parallels
There are difficult places to invest in, and then there is Indonesia
While Qantas' Geoff Dixon once equated Singapore Inc with the darker quadrants of airspace, he now covets an alliance with its more lucrative enterprise.
Locals claim a monster lurks in the waters of northern Sulawesi's Buyat Bay. Mining leviathan Newmont says that's nonsense
How a frozen-food salesman from New Jersey - a former refugee from war-torn Afghanistan - built his country's largest wireless network
Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani is battling warlords, cabinet colleagues, indifferent global donors and stomach cancer as he struggles to salvage Afghanistan’s ravaged economy. If he fails, the world could pay an enormous price. Eric Ellis reports from Kabul
Australia and Malaysia should be good friends. With Dr Mahathir gone, they may well soon be
It has improved the bottom line for multinationals and has fueled a boom in one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Yet the outsourcing of call centre jobs to India is set to become an Australian election issue
At Dubai's airport Emirates rules the runways
Aviation gas is up. Ticket prices are up and United is in trouble – again. But Emirates is thriving and with 90 new planes landing soon, its boss is expecting competitors to squeal
Victoria's Secret's Secret? Hint: It's In the Indian Ocean
Sri Lanka's largest private company has overcome 20 years of civil war to become the lingerie chain's biggest supplier
Qantas' move into the busy South-East Asia budget air lanes may be $50m well spent or a one-way ticket to shareholder strife
He was one of Mahathir Mohamad’s closest business allies. Now a new Prime Minister has cut the mogul down to size
Executive gets down to bare essentials
A middle-class Frenchman turned Hindu monk has the faithful in India kissing his feet, Eric Ellis reports
The baggy greens mix it with turbans and Shane Warne and Ricky Ponting speak Hindi down the corporate end of Australia's one-day tour. After all, Aussie cricketers are as gods in this cricket-obsessed land
Christian Fabre dresses down at work, but not just to polo shirt and chinos. This 62-year-old industrialist works in the nude
Bali economy victim of nightclub bombings
Indonesia's famous tropical resort isle still struggles with terrorism's effects
The hopes of a generation of Indonesians were destroyed in the rubble of the Sari Club
Indonesia holds a world record that Jakarta doesn’t like to make public: the most pirate-infested seas on the planet
Singapore's New Straits
Piracy on the high seas is on the rise in South-East Asia
Diplomatic score: The UN's man in Myanmar has business interests there too
In a rare interview, Yos Euarchukiati tells how a benevolent monarchy is being rescued from old-world deals
Royal Rehab: Thailand's Crown Property Bureau gets a corporate makeover
Thailand's royals live off the income of the Crown Property Bureau, created in 1936 as the absolute monarchy evolved into a constitutional one
Conoco Timor - A battle in East Timor
East Timor, a nation that depends on foreign aid to fill its coffers, is about to become a country that relies on one company to fuel its economy
Tony Oates, my part in his downfall
Bulletin correspondent Eric Ellis recalls how he tracked down Alan Bond's alleged bagman in the shadows of the Gdansk shipyards
Why is the chairman of Singapore's leading telecommunications company buying shares in a rival telco?
Why is Singapore Inc. investing bigtime in its neighbor?
Battling the new millennium bug
All hail SingTel Optus chief, a modest profit
Ow enjoys excesses of successes
Trade Minister Mark Vaile hopes the new free-trade deal with Singapore will spell paydirt for Australia. Eric Ellis reports it may not be such a walk-up start.
SingTel proves a quaint little learner
Trouble in Paradise - Bali Bomb Blasts Indonesia
'Our defense to convince people that doing business in Indonesia is safe is finished.'
When you are a billionaire, you can do things that ordinary people cannot
Freeport McMoran CEO James Moffett has a lot to worry about
Francis Yeoh reckons he does business with a huge advantage
With no previous airline industry experience, Tony Fernandes didn't mind breaking the rules at Air Asia
A Shot Across Singapore's Bow Dueling Ports
'If we can't add value and offer a superior product at a lower cost, we'll have to lose.'
Letter from Dili: Independence brought fireworks and hope, but oil will bring money
A Shot Across Singapore's Bow Dueling Ports
Mohamed Sidik Shaik Osman points to the mile-and-a-half stretch of new wharves, their cranes glinting in Malaysia's tropical sun.
The House of Tata, big and historic, is one of India's most beloved companies. It is also a mess
The government says Cojuangco's 47% stake is an ill-gotten prize from the Marcos era.
Krishnan's Rolodex includes names like Jack Welch and Rupert Murdoch.
Asia's Dark Skies. Only the fittest will survive
Airlines in Crisis: From Bad to Worse
From Gas Station Czar to Megawati Power Broker
Observers hope that Taufik Kiemas won't return the country to Suharto-style cronyism.
Step aside, Sage of Omaha. You've got big-time competition in Singapore.
Not even the legendary Warren Buffett has made the calls claimed by Singapore's Government Investment Corp.
There are three certainties to life Down Under: The beers will be cold, the beaches will be golden, and people will grumble about air travel.
Singapore Telecommunications CEO Lee Hsien Yang isn't a natural gambler.
But in one of the biggest bets of his career-a $7 billion bid for Aussie telephone company Optus-Lee has a lot staked on the outcome: his job, Singapore's prestige, even an exacting father's approval.
The new economy might have been designed in California garages, but a lot of it was built on Singapore assembly lines.
Asian rivalry turns into a ship fight
Dili faces future, hopeful of oil
We are now mechanics, if not masters, of our destiny
Business of terror main event of year
In the island state, many hands make elite work.
SIA chief Cheong struts his stuff - Life sometimes imitates art.
A Goode serve of national interest
What's Separating SingTel and Optus? Canberra.
Australia's government has to O.K. the $8 billion telecom takeover. Despite many objections, chances are it will get the nod
A Way to Stop the Aussie Dollar's Slide?
One prominent businessman's bold proposition: Ditch the native currency and adopt America's greenback
The Perplexing Tale of India's Two Faces
The contrast between a sports hero and a fallen politico shows how the country is torn between great potential and reform-killing corruption
Why
Shell Could Get Shocked Down Under
Its $5 billion offer for Australia's Woodside Petroleum might fall victim to a
populist crusade against globalization.
It's
Getting Hard to Paper Over APP's Crisis
The debt-laden pulp-and-paper giant, owned by a flamboyant Chinese-Indonesian
tycoon, may be on the verge of collapse.
SingTel's
Connections May Be Costing It Plenty
Now deregulated, Singapore's former phone monopoly is struggling to reassure
investors that its government ties aren't binding
Who's
Gonna Gulp Down Foster's?
Since the Aussie brewer nabbed U.S. wine maker Beringer, it's in the takeover
crosshairs of any number of possible buyers.
Why the firm's Optus bid could be good for Singapore SingTel Heads Down Under
Asia
Buzz: Hot Property
An
ex-banker turns a blowtorch on techpacific.com, and turns heads
As
its leaders come to grips with the new
The
continent watched glumly as a New Economy rose--faster than Yahoo!'s
How
High Will It Go?
OPEC's
determination to push up the price of oil could derail Asia's fragile economic
recovery
Foreigners hired to repair Asia's banks face a tough and thankless task
The organization created to clean up corporate Indonesia is itself tainted by a corruption scandal
Being Free is Not the Same Thing as Being Prosperous
Although coffee is East Timor's No. 1 export earner, the territory's economic viability may not amount to a hill of beans
Black American Dream Comes True In Blossomfields
The good burghers of Olympia Fields will today celebrate Martin Luther King Jnr Day in the United States, along, notionally, with 25 million African-Americans who comprise about a tenth of the US population.
" Is that a Pentium you have there?" It's not a question one expects of a hotel room service waiter delivering breakfast. But if hospitality staff in Hollywood are stereotyped as "waiting" to be discovered, in Silicon Valley they're biding time en route to becoming the next Bill Gates, Larry Ellison or Mark Andriessen.
The Real Talk Is About The Latino Dollar
It's an idea that's been aired recently in Hong Kong, in Brussels, and with the simultaneous advent of the euro in Europe and the ongoing economic turbulence in Brazil, it's an idea that's gaining, er, common currency in smart Latin American salons.
