James Tjahaja Riady

Dr. James Tjahaja Riady is Chief Executive Officer of the Lippo Group of Companies, a major Indonesian conglomerate with significant interests in retail, media, real estate, banking, natural resources, hospitality, and healthcare industries.

The business tycoon was voted as Marcopolis’ #5 most powerful businessman in Indonesia.

The son of founder and patriarch of the Lippo Group Mochtar Riady who led Lippo Bank into the top five biggest private banks in Indonesia after being instrumental in building Bank Central Asia into Indonesia’s biggest bank.

The empire Mochtar built from the early 1980s expanded rapidly during the 1990s. Expansion into property in 1991 came with the establishment of Lippo Land Development and elite housing developments, beachside condominiums, office complexes and even an Indonesian branch of Singapore’s Gleneagles were built as fast as land could be bought up.

Acquisitions in banking and property in Hong Kong, the United States, China and Singapore resulted in the group having more than 165 affiliated companies in Indonesia, China and the United States.

It was widely assumed that the Riady empire was on the verge of collapse when the financial crisis struck in late 1997. It seemed dangerously vulnerable in the face of astronomical interest rates and inflation, and mountains of bad debt at the bank.

Lippo Bank was the first bank to be recapitalized by the state and the Riadys lost control of their bank when the government in effect nationalized it by taking a 59 percent stake in compensation for a $700 million bailout given through the infamous Bank Indonesia Liquidity Assistance (BLBI) program.

The group still kept its head above water at a time when companies in the banking, financial services and property sectors were dropping like flies. The bank then geared up to face a new cycle of growth and streamlined its infrastructure. It was James’s panache as a super-salesman that largely persuaded foreign investors to participate in a 1998 rights issue to help recapitalize Lippo Bank. He raised almost $250 million at a time when foreigners were aghast at Indonesia and its banking system.

Lippo’s main company in China, China Resources, owns a range of businesses, from supermarkets, timber to financial services for Chinese government-owned companies.