In this issue
forbes asia
CEO William Adamopoulos Senior Vice President Tina Wee Executive Directors Eugene Wong, Aarin Chan, Janelle Kuah Director, Circulation Eunice Soo Sales Directors Michelle Ong, Lindsay Williams, Janice Ang Deputy Director, Marketing & Research Joan Low Deputy Director, Circulation Pavan Kumar Deputy Director, Events & Communications Audra Ruyters Deputy Director, Conferences Jolynn Chua Senior Manager/Assistant to the CEO Jennifer Chung Senior Manager, Events & Communications Melissa Ng Senior Manager, Ad Services – Digital Keiko Wong Ad Services Manager Fiona Carvalho Conference Manager Clarabelle Chaw, Dorinn Chin Assistant Manager, Marketing & Research Gwynneth Chan Assistant Manager, Conferences Peh Ying Si Office Manager, Hong Kong Megan Cheung Advertising Executive Sharon Joseph Marketing and Research Executive Priscilla Lim Advertising Coordinator Hazel Liu Circulation Services Taynmoli Karuppiah Sannassy, Jennifer Yim Editor Justin Doebele Executive Editor Wayne Arnold Asia Wealth Editor & India Editor Naazneen Karmali Senior Editor Robert Olsen Senior Editor-Special Projects Rana Wehbe Art Director Mirna Aprilla Associate Editors Grace Chung,…
displaying confidence
To start 2020, this February issue has two distinctive features. First, this issue is the first of the year and with it comes the launch of a new design, meant to bring continuity with the design of the U.S. edition of Forbes. It was ably realized by Art Director Mirna Aprilla and gives this publication a refreshed look. Second is the editorial feature: the Hong Kong 50 richest list. It’s well-timed, if not an ideal time, for this list. Hong Kong is suffering its worst downturn since 2009—and that previous slump was due to the global financial crisis. Its current woes are unique to the territory, with no clear end in sight for the continuing protests or the U.S.-China trade war. The pressure is on now for the political leadership in…
international trade is good
International trade is in bad odor these days, being blamed for massive job losses and draining wealth from the U.S. The rap is wrong: Trade creates far more resources and jobs than it destroys. Free markets are always changing, with businesses opening, closing, growing or shrinking. New technologies upend existing ways of doing things. The “churn” in the labor market is enormous, with literally millions of jobs in a typical year being extinguished and millions more being created. The railroad industry, for example, was one of the U.S.’ largest employers after WWII, with more than 1.4 million workers. Today the total is around 170,000. In the late 1940s there were 350,000 telephone operators. Automatic-switching equipment did in those jobs. Ditto the once ubiquitous office typing pool. Yet, at the same time,…
the war on prosperity
Will our golden age of global prosperity go on, stall or retract? Looming storm clouds such as North Korea, Iran, Hong Kong, sovereign debt, stock and property bubbles cannot be ignored. But let’s also tip our hats to how far prosperity has advanced since 1950. The global population was then 2.5 billion and 60% of earth’s inhabitants had too little to eat. Today it’s 7.7 billion, and 20% are poor. In 1950, Norway was the leader in life expectancy at 72 years. Today, global life expectancy is 73. What bold economist, in the 1960s, dared risk their professional reputation by predicting a capitalist-led China renaissance and Singapore’s rise as the world’s richest city? Who, today, might dare to predict a thriving sub-Saharan Africa, or the emergence of capitalist republics in the Middle…
let billionaires be billionaires
Billionaires have been cast as villains, symbols of all that ails the free market. Populists on the left are braying for their scalps, abetted by pundits like Thomas Piketty, who argued in his 2014 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century that inequality is intrinsic to capitalism, and only punitive taxes on the rich can tame it. At the other end of the spectrum, historian Niall Ferguson offers different advice. In a recent interview with McKinsey Quarterly, he urged business titans and billionaires to stop being “the villain.” He gives us the history lesson contrasting John D. Rockefeller with Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie, Ferguson writes, understood the power of philanthropy and Rockefeller didn’t, which is why people today tend to associate Carnegie fondly with public libraries instead of steel, while Rockefeller is remembered…
agent provocateur
Not far from the giant screens flooding this latest Electronic Entertainment Expo with videogames, Hana Tjia is leaning against a cinder-block wall and typing furiously on her phone. The United Talent Agency representative is coordinating informal meetings at the giant gaming convention with M.A.C. Cosmetics, whose execs flew from New York to meet her clients—Valkyrae, 28, and Alexia Raye, 23. They’ll have to wait. Enclosed in glass booths, the two women are playing Borderlands 3, offering a preview of the shooter game to about 4,000 of their combined 1.1 million Twitch followers and to onlookers in the Los Angeles Convention Center. Their devotees, many also female, represent a new market for the high-end cosmetics brand. Sales of M.A.C. lipsticks inspired by the mobile game Honor of Kings were “gangbusters,” say the…
