So SingTel opted for Time Engineering, a part of Renong, which has good connections with the ruling political party and is run by the boyish Halim Saad, the country's biggest tycoon of Malay (as opposed to Chinese) ethnicity.

ECONOMIST: Asian Telecoms

Mr al-Bukhary is a proven achiever (as, though, were Tajudin Ramli and Halim Saad in their day), and Tanjung Pelepas is a remarkable success story, having attracted the regional hub operations of Denmark's Maersk and Taiwan's Evergreen away from Singapore.

ECONOMIST: The big clean-up