JAKARTA: Eka Tjipta Widjaja, who started out as a coconut and palm oil trader at the age of 15 before building a multi-billion dollar business empire spanning from paper and pulp to financial services, has died.
Widjaja, 98, died at a hospital in Jakarta on Saturday, Gandi Sulistiyanto, a managing director at Sinar Mas group, said. The founder of Sinar Mas Group was worth US$9.3 billion and was the fourth-richest Indonesian, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The Indonesian tycoon of Chinese origin will also be remembered for the US$14 billion default by his flagship Asia Pulp & Paper Co. after the 1998 Asian financial crisis. While several of Sinar Mas’s businesses were taken over by the government after the fall of the Suharto regime, he managed to rebuild his empire.