🚨Housekeeping: Saturday’s Brainjam for founding members had a duplicated paragraph. That has been removed.
MVP (minimum viable product) coming in hot. The first issue of Southeast dives into:
🇮🇩 Indonesia’s sovereign wealth fund Danantara under the spotlight
🇻🇳 Braking the VinFast hype
🇲🇾🇸🇬 Second-generation besties in Johor and Singapore
🇹🇭 Thaksin’s shady financier
I’m planning to turn Southeast into a weekly regional edition for all newsletter subscribers. I may slot it on Sundays, depending on the news flow.
In many ways, this is me testing interest as cheaply as possible — without spinning up a standalone publication just yet.
If it sticks, then… I suppose I’ll need to have that conversation with a few more people than just myself.
While I’m at it, if you’ve got tips or leads, feel free to drop me an email: emmanuel [at] themalaysianist.com.
You’re reading a paid version of The Malaysianist, a newsletter on money and power by writer and journalist Emmanuel Samarathisa.
I run monthly and annual subscriptions. There’s also the atas or founding member tier where you get all the perks of an annual subscription and more, such as an annual or founder’s report and insight into how this little corner of the internet fared throughout the year.
🚨 The founding member tier is a sliding one, meaning it starts at US$60/year and you can raise it as high as you want — in case you want to give more, which I welcome anytime.
Group subscriptions are on the table, if you’re mulling over purchases for your organisation or for family members.
Indonesia’s second sovereign wealth fund (SWF), Danantara, has been moving slowly but steadily, placing bets and entering deals with the country’s elites and state-owned enterprises.
Hardly unusual behaviour for an SWF in this region, though its early moves risk cementing familiar stereotypes.