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Economic
Curtains for a serial banker
In March 2006, the curtains were drawn on the controversial banking career of Khoo Teck Puat when his estate inked a deal to sell his stake in Standard Chartered Bank to the Singapore government for $4 billion. Here is an inside look at the former bank clerk and an ex-fugitive who built a multi-billion dollar fortune in seven decades.
It was late 1965 and Tungku Abdul Rahman, Prime Minister of Malaysia, was feeling the heat.
The father of independent Malaysia had just ended the disagreeable business of overseeing the secession of Singapore from the Federation of Malaysia. The tiny city-state, led by the forceful Cambridge-trained lawyer, Lee Kuan Yew, had declared itself a sovereign nation.
Not so Khoo kids
They may be born with a golden spoon in their mouth, but being a child of Khoo Teck Puat can be a trying experience.
Foreign dragon, local snake
From Wheelock Marden to Standard Chartered....
In 1985, Khoo Teck Puat and shipping magnate, Y. K. Pao, waged an epic tussle for the venerable British trading house, Wheelock Marden.
Amitabh Bachchan vs Shah Rukh Khan: The Bollywood Fight of the Century
The Jalsa corner
Main character
Amitabh Bachchan, (“The Big B”) 64, actor, TV presenter, poet, one-time Member of Parliament and potential candidate for presidency.
Supporting Cast:
Bollywood's business connections in politics
Two of the biggest names in India Inc take sides in Bollywood's Battle Royale.
When two of India’s richest men are feuding, just about anything that involves the two can be turned into yet another bone of contention. When the two men are brothers, and their disagreement is about a movie about their late father financed by the younger brother, it is no longer a bone, but an invitation to open warfare.
March 2006, a flashback
A look at what happened in North Asian businesses, three years to this day.
The Japanese company, already under investigation for the alleged sale of helicopters to Poly Technologies, a firm linked to the People’s Liberation Arm of China, for military uses, is now suspected of selling an aircraft to another firm affiliated to the Chinese military.
January 2006
Latest figures from Toyota showed that the sale of Lexus, which was introduced in the Japanese market for the first time in August, has far exceeded expectations. A total of 4,600 units of the GS and SC models were sold in that month, three times higher than projected.
Look, ma! No buttons!
No doubt about it, the iPhone does not look like other cellphones—it has no buttons and no keypad. What it has is a screen that changes its display in response to finger taps to either a virtual keyboard or a virtual phone pad or a virtual movie screen or… well, you get the idea.
Uptown phones for the uptown girls
One week after Steve Jobs introduced the much-awaited iPhone to the world, LG unveiled a phone that looked eerily like the iPhone, the PRADA phone.
Who's making your iPhone?
The iPhone may have an American face—the face of the bearded, balding Steve Jobs—but its innards are pure Taiwanese.
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Another Point
An imaginary factual blog of General David Petraeus, Commander, United States Central Command