Thursday, January 05, 2006

Way To Go Samsung

South Korea's Pride and Joy

I have just read that Samsung Electronics Co topped US$100 billion in market value, one of only four Asian companies to do so. Samsung is now second in size to Vodafone Group PLC among non-US technology stocks and has overtaken Finland's Nokia, Motorola and Japan's Sony. That's a pretty impressive feat for a company which had its humble beginnings as a maker of black and white TVs.

Looking at the list of largest companies in Asia by market capitalization, I wonder when we will see a Malaysian company in it. Currently our best chance lays in Petronas, the largest company in our country although it can be said that Petronas is more 'government' than 'independant'. In my opinion however, government linkages aside, the oil & gas industry might not be sufficiently 'high-growth' in nature (as compared to say, technology) to push Petronas to the upper echelons of Asia's large corporations. There are exceptions though, Exxon Mobil being one of them. Under the stewardship of its ex-CEO Raymond Lee, Exxon grew to become the second largest company in the world after Walmart! Although the surge in oil prices had a lot to do with it, it doesn't detract in any way from the great man's contributions.

Anyway back to the point *ahem*, do we Malaysians have what it takes to create a world class non-government linked company? Perhaps that's a question all Malaysians should think about as we face an increasingly uncertain future.

2 Comments:

Blogger ::Lord Apprentice:: said...

does air-asia count?

12:24 PM  
Blogger Bernard Yong said...

Air Asia is a high flyer alright, but I dont think an airline company can attain a large enough market cap to beat all the electronics, technology, petrol companies around.

If you look at the world's top ten largest companies, they are mostly in retail, energy, automotive and consumer services. No airlines there.

1:56 PM  

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