SINGAPORE/HONG KONG (Sept 8): From a rundown office tower in Singapore’s main shopping district, Indonesia’s wealthiest family has been quietly doing something it rarely does: investing money abroad as Southeast Asia’s largest economy loses momentum.
It started at the end of 2023, when a company called Evergreen Hill Enterprise Pte Ltd spent US$669 million (RM2.71 billion) on a specialised paper business in the US. A year later, Evergreen paid €360 million (US$418 million or RM1.69 billion) for an Austrian manufacturer of cigarette papers.
In all, some nine entities based in Singapore and London tied to the billionaire Hartono family have invested at least US$1.4 billion abroad, according to filings and interviews by Bloomberg News with people close to the group. The deals mark a sharp pivot for a media-shy clan worth about US$30 billion that has traditionally parked its wealth at home, where it runs a sprawling conglomerate of banks, cigarette factories and real estate.
The moves, which haven’t been reported in the media before, underscore rising unease among the business elite in Indonesia over measures from President Prabowo Subianto.
“The government’s growing role in the economy has stoked uncertainty in some of the country’s most prominent sectors,” said Laura Schwartz, a senior Asia analyst at risk intelligence firm Verisk Maplecroft. “The administration’s hot-and-cold approach with Indonesian business leaders is not improving investors’ nerves.”
Since Prabowo came to power in October 2024, Indonesia has seen a wave of capital flight, sending the currency to record lows and sparking a stock sell-off that’s made the nation’s equity market the world’s worst performing this year. Global investors offloaded almost US$4 billion of equities since January on a net basis, nearly four times the amount in all of 2025. The biggest foreign banks in the country repatriated US$640 million of capital since he took over as president.
Prabowo’s shock removal of Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati last year was one trigger of investor angst. More recently, respected central bank Governor Perry Warjiyo left, citing personal reasons. Meanwhile, Danantara, the new sovereign wealth fund and brainchild of Prabowo, has clumped almost all of the country’s state-owned entities together, raising concerns the president is taking too much control of the financial services and commodity export sectors.
A representative for Prabowo said the government “remains committed to maintaining a fair and rules-based business environment for all investors and business groups”.
The Government Communication Agency added that the current administration “values the private sector’s role in supporting investment, job creation, economic growth and national development” and noted that business participation in government initiatives “does not alter the government’s commitment to equal treatment, legal certainty and sound corporate governance”.
While the Hartonos still have the vast majority of their assets in the country, their recent international investments signal growing concerns about the nation’s economy, to which most of their wealth is tied. The family, led by the late Michael Bambang Hartono until his death and his younger brother Robert Budi, 85, own Indonesia’s most profitable bank, a multibillion-dollar cigarette operation, and businesses ranging from an electric-vehicle distribution company to a dairy farm and chain of noodle restaurants.
The Hartonos have kept their name off the foreign acquisitions. Official filings and press releases list Evergreen Hill as the buyer, describing it only as being part of “a successful, Indonesia-based privately held group”. The Hartonos aren’t mentioned, nor are any of their major holding companies. Yet according to filings in Singapore and Indonesia, Evergreen’s sole owner is PT Eragraha Pirantimegah, which is wholly owned by the Hartonos.
The family declined to comment.
The group continues to make overseas investments, including in a financial-services software firm in Singapore, and is considering more deals as the economic environment at home remains volatile and the business concentration in Indonesia puts their fortunes at risk, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified because they’re not authorised to speak publicly. The recent purchases were driven by the family’s strategy to diversify their revenue streams into other currencies, the people said.
Like many global rich, the Hartonos have long had a beachhead in neighbouring Singapore for haven, tax and diversification reasons. Patriarch Michael passed away at 86 in March in the city-state, where he owned a home with his younger brother along Nassim Road in an enclave lined with multimillion-dollar residences. Other relatives own properties nearby.
Their family office is a short drive away, and operates from the same floor as Evergreen Hill at Orchard Towers, the 51-year-old office block where prostitutes openly plied their trade until a 2022 crackdown. Several of the group’s Singapore entities are in the same building or in the vicinity, some of them registered in the British Virgin Islands or Cayman Islands for added privacy, based on filings.
The Hartonos’ push to increase their assets abroad also stems from growing tensions with Prabowo, the people familiar say.
One of the president’s measures that has sparked debate is a nationwide free meals plan for school students and pregnant mothers. About US$45 billion was originally budgeted this year alone for the nation of 285 million people. Another contentious issue is the campaign led by Prabowo’s defence minister to seize millions of hectares of privately owned oil palm plantations, a measure perceived as unfair by investors both at home and abroad.
To foot some of Prabowo’s spending initiatives, the administration has raised funds by asking the country's wealthy to buy so-called “Patriot bonds” at below market rates. In August last year, Danantara called the nation’s 10 wealthiest families, including the Hartonos, to a meeting in Jakarta with chief executive officer Rosan Roeslani regarding the Patriot bonds.
Neither Robert Budi nor his eldest son Victor Hartono, 54, showed up, although they did send a representative. All the other tycoons, including Anthoni Salim, attended in person. While Prabowo himself wasn’t there, he took the Hartonos’ absence as a sign of disrespect, the people said.
Within days of that meeting, the National Awakening Party — part of the ruling coalition — accused the Hartonos of underpaying the government for the purchase of Bank Central Asia.
Michael and Robert teamed up with Farallon Capital Management to buy a controlling stake in BCA in 2002 for about US$537 million, based on exchange rates at the time, beating out Standard Chartered plc. BCA’s current market value of US$46.2 billion makes it the fourth-largest lender in Southeast Asia, trailing only Singapore’s biggest banks. Armand Hartono, another son of Budi’s, also helps run the financial institution.
The political party in August urged the government to take back the BCA stake via Danantara. Roeslani said at the time neither his company nor the government have any such plans.
A few months later, Victor Hartono was among five individuals slapped with a temporary travel ban after being detained as part of a tax probe. While the scion was released and got his passport back within days — and his younger brother Martin was later seen accompanying Prabowo on a state visit to the UK — the damage was done. Concerns about BCA’s future sent the stock down 17% in 2025, and another 18% this year, although those declines also partly reflect a broader lack of investor confidence in Indonesia's stock market.
“The Hartono family’s case demonstrates the administration’s willingness to show that even Indonesia’s wealthiest conglomerates must comply with its priorities,” said Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara, executive director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies, an Indonesian think tank.
This could make foreign investors more skittish as well, he said. “If such coercive measures continue without clear legal certainty or adherence to the rule of law, long-term investors may become more cautious about committing capital to Indonesia.”
An eighth generation of Indonesian-Chinese descent, the Hartono brothers are no strangers to the political and economic turbulence that regularly erupts in Indonesia. While billionaires Sukanto Tanoto, Pangestu, Low Tuck Kwong and Salim have been expanding their assets in Singapore, Hong Kong and beyond, the Hartonos have generally stayed home.
The clan is known for their modesty. While Robert owns a collection of multimillion-dollar residences and a private jet he occasionally rents out, he and his children eschew brand name clothes, the people familiar said.
The family’s early fortune came from clove cigarette manufacturing in Kudus, a town in central Java. Oei Wie Gwan, Michael and Robert’s father, founded a business later known as PT Djarum in 1951. The distinctive kretek cigarettes, which blend tobacco with cloves, are believed by locals to help relieve asthma among other ailments. As of 2025, the firm produced about a fifth of the cigarettes sold in Indonesia, according to market research firm Euromonitor International.
A large wall-mounted video art piece gracing Djarum’s boardroom in Jakarta depicts four burning cigarettes — the first three represent Victor, his father and grandfather. The fourth bears no name, reflecting the biggest question facing the clan: who will carry on the business. Many of the younger generation — some 18 in all — don’t even smoke, Victor Hartono likes to note.
The Hartonos, sensing cigarettes are a sunset industry, have been diversifying into other businesses, from EV assembly to palm oil plantations and online shopping.
In many ways, it’s how the Hartonos have always operated since their ancestors arrived from China in the 1800s. From the Dutch colonial era to the Japanese occupation during World World II, the family has thrived, Victor Hartono said in a lecture last year at a local university.
“Whoever was in power, we adapted,” the scion said. “That’s the story of our family.”
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