How Anthony built the fortune
Anthony Salim inherited the leadership of a business empire assembled by his father, Sudono Salim, a Chinese born trader who settled in Java before the Second World War and became one of the closest business partners of President Suharto. Under the New Order government the family won licences and concessions across flour milling, cement, banking, cars and food, and by the early 1990s the Salim Group was the largest private business network in Indonesia.
Anthony took over day to day leadership from his father in the 1990s, just before the Asian financial crisis hit Indonesia in 1997 and 1998. The collapse of the rupiah, the fall of Suharto and a run on Bank Central Asia, then controlled by the family, left the group heavily indebted to the state. The Salims handed over a long list of companies to the national bank restructuring agency to settle obligations, giving up the bank and many other businesses.
What Anthony kept, and later rebuilt around, was the food business. Indofood, the maker of Indomie instant noodles and owner of the Bogasari flour mills, became the core of a slimmer and more focused group. Through careful refinancing, listings of subsidiaries and expansion abroad, he turned that consumer franchise into the main engine of the family fortune again.
Companies and holdings
The group's assets are held through a web of Indonesian and offshore companies. The best known are:
- Indofood Sukses Makmur, a listed food company covering flour, noodles, dairy, snacks, edible oils and plantations, where Anthony is president director and chief executive.
- Indofood CBP, the branded consumer products unit listed in Jakarta in 2010.
- First Pacific, a Hong Kong listed investment company, where he is chairman, with stakes in Indofood, Philippine infrastructure through Metro Pacific Investments and the telecom operator PLDT.
- Indomaret, a large Indonesian chain of convenience stores.
The family also has interests in property, auto distribution, plantations and technology investments, some shared with partners in Singapore, China and elsewhere.
Early life and career
Anthony Salim, also known by his Chinese name Liem Fung Seng, was born in 1949 in Indonesia, the youngest son of Sudono Salim. He was educated partly in England before returning to join the family companies in the early 1970s, a period when the group was moving from trading into manufacturing. He worked alongside his father and several long serving partners, gaining experience in flour milling, cement and banking.
As the founder aged, Anthony became the group's main decision maker. His handling of the post 1998 settlement with the government is widely regarded as the turning point of his career: rather than fight for every asset, he concentrated on Indofood and First Pacific and rebuilt from there. His father moved to Singapore and died there in 2012.
Colleagues and observers describe him as a detail oriented manager who prefers negotiation to confrontation. During the restructuring he dealt directly with government agencies, foreign creditors and partners, and he kept long serving executives in place at Indofood and First Pacific. That continuity, combined with a willingness to bring in professional managers such as Manuel Pangilinan at First Pacific, has shaped how the group operates today.
Philanthropy and public life
Anthony Salim keeps a modest public profile and rarely gives interviews. Group companies run corporate programs in nutrition, education and disaster relief across Indonesia, and the family has supported community projects linked to its plantation and milling operations. Detailed figures on his personal giving are not published.
He is regularly mentioned as one of the most influential business figures in Southeast Asia, and Indofood's products, especially Indomie noodles, are sold in dozens of countries across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. His role in steering the group through Indonesia's transition from authoritarian rule to democracy remains the defining element of his public reputation.
Politically, Anthony has avoided the visible alignment with any single leader that marked his father's era. Group companies have instead focused on regulatory compliance, professional management and the listing of subsidiaries, which brings outside investors and published accounts. Analysts often point to this shift toward transparency as a reason the family regained access to international capital markets after the crisis years.