The disclosure that Indonesia’s powerful Bakrie family is facing its third serious debt crisis since 1997 makes depressing reading, and not just for investors in Bumi plc, the London-listed coal venture set up by the family and the UK financier Nat Rothschild.
The Bakries’ apparent addiction to expansion through unsustainable debt draws fresh attention to the shortcomings of emerging Asia’s family business sector, with its apparently inexhaustible supply of sibling squabbles, succession battles and corporate governance scandals.
It is not hard to find examples. Think of Stanley Ho, the octogenarian Macao gambling king who fought a public battle this year with family members seeking control of his casino empire. Or the equally colourful fight within Hong Kong’s Kwok family over who should run Sun Hung Kai Properties, one of the world’s most valuable property companies.