October 17, 2005
ASIA'S 25 MOST POWERFUL
Our second annual ranking of the smartest, most successful, most influential business leaders from South Korea to Saudi Arabia, by Eric Ellis and others
If you want to know how FORTUNE defines power, just look at Jong- Yong Yun. The Samsung Electronics CEO--No. 1 in our second annual ranking of Asia's most powerful business leaders--earned billions last year, even though the going was tough. He's pushing better products to market than most of his rivals. And his business strategy inspires others. Money, smarts, and influence--those are the building blocks of power. And the men and women here have all figured out how to assemble them.
There are some new faces this year. Last year's top two leaders-- Toyota's Fujio Cho and Sony's Nobuyuki Idei--have retired and been replaced by successors (at lower positions, since they have yet to prove themselves). Others, like Infosys's Nandan Nilekani and China National Petroleum's Chen Geng, have moved up, demonstrating the importance of energy and information in the global economy. And then there's newcomer Jack Ma, who just sold 40% of his Chinese Internet company to Yahoo for $1 billion. He's not only a visionary, it also didn't hurt that he has recently dined with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Sometimes power is also about who you know.