Sept. 2 – Forbes Asia released this year’s edition of its “Best Under A Billion” list today, picking out 200 of the top-performing companies across the Asia-Pacific region with actively traded shares and sales between US$5 million and US$1 billion.
According to Forbes, the selection of the 200 companies was based on earnings growth, sales growth, and shareholders’ return on equity over the past 12 months as well as over three years. A majority of the 200 companies came from the electronics, information technology, and healthcare sectors.
For the second straight year, China (including Hong Kong) came in as the region boasting the most companies on the list, despite its presence dropping from 78 companies last year to 71 this year. The number of Indian companies on the list nearly doubled from 20 last year to 39 this year as it rose to number two on the list. Japan, last year’s second most represented country, saw the number of Japanese companies on the list drop from 24 down to 2 due to the country’s poor economic climate.
It seems my adopted country, Australia, has only 13 companies this year compared to 18 the previous year. The affect of the GFC was not that severe here but nevertheless affected business. Now that Australia is coming up smelling like roses, the USA investment community is starting to sniff around and are making investments and setting up offices. I expect next year’s numbers to be an improvement. Japan on the other hand is the shocker here, having only 2 companies compared to 24 the year before. Together with the continuing financial mess there and the difficulties forming a stable government, this does not bode well for the future. Might that be “The Land of the Setting Sun”.
Just another observation. If you throw in the predominently Chinese populated countries of China, Taiwan, HK, Singapore they would make up 98 companies out of the 200 on the list, i.e 49%
I wouldn’t agree that the Singaporean companies are Chinese, and the Taiwanese also have a completely different market and political operational base. – Chris