I don't feel comfortable talking about them in public :P
I will say that all 3 of the reasons you've proposed don't ring true to me, nor do many of the proposed answers in 's original thread.
Right now, the state of my research is still a bit of a mess.
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The good news is that I've run some of my theories past those working in/adjacent to these SEA conglomerates, and they've said that it explains some of the things they've noticed while working in those contexts. So I think I'm on the right path.
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Related: twitter.com/ejames_c/statu
Investigate the history of the use of the JV structure, and many things will follow.
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So, working theory: businesses reflect the capital structure of their ecosystems (like how animals evolve to fit their environments), and judging an ecosystem for not having enough startups is a bit like saying there aren’t enough polar bears in a tropical rainforest.
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Interesting! I wonder where India fits in all this, they seem to have 1 foot in each ecosystem with large conglomerates & 1 vertical firms
blog.eladgil.com/2020/10/unicor
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So this is EXACTLY the right question to be asking.
Why are conglomerates so dominant in the rest of the world?
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The obvious answer is government granted monopolies. The approach I’ve taken is to ask the general question and then break it down per country — Korea (chaebols), Japan (zaibatsus), SEA and HK Chinese family conglomerates, Indian conglomerates, etc.
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Naturally the answers become very messy very quickly, because (inevitably) it becomes tied to the history of the country/region.
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I think that's a good line of inquiry: there have been empirical studies (and common sense) that countries with stronger familial ties (vs more individualistic countries) have higher nepotism & corruption. Even within regions, eg Northern vs Southern Europe.
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Aye. Another angle that I think the Western commentators miss out on is the influence of Chinese business practices in SEA/HK, on the way business is done in China today. It’s important to remember that the Chinese diaspora achieved prosperity before the mainland opened up.
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So I’ve investigated HK/SEA conglomerates first, before investigating China’s. In most of the biographies of the first gen tycoons, you will hear of numerous attempts to help Chinese businesses/do JVs with mainland Chinese partners.
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One of my hypotheses is that this has influenced the way they’ve done business. Of course, I’m not sure about this; everything I say here is contingent on more digging.