ALL three main candidates for South Korea's presidential election on December 19th promise similar things: curbing the power of the chaebol, the country's industrial conglomerates; expanding the welfare state; and securing more peaceful relations with North Korea.
Several presidents, under the pretext of increasing media pluralism, sponsored new media laws to break up large conglomerates, expand government and community media, or create government agencies with oversight of news media.
Moving forward, as these conglomerates expand their footprint, it may force some consolidation in the industry.
The conglomerate expanded to include, among other things, a security agency, a catering service, car rentals, his own acrobatic jet team, and finally, two Paris and London-based TV stations addressing Algerian youth in Europe.
Celene da Silva, 29, is one of thousands of door-to-door vendors for Nestlé, helping the world's largest packaged food conglomerate expand its reach into a quarter-million households in Brazil's farthest-flung corners.
With such globe-trotting drive, his company grew rapidly to become South Korea's 12th-largest conglomerate, expanding from auto parts and cement to construction, paper, shipbuilding, hotels, aerospace and computer services.
In 1961, however, a policy decision was made to diversify, and in the succeeding decades the company became a conglomerate, expanding into several new products and services, such as toiletries and household-products manufacturing, catering, airport terminal services, and financial services; from 1970 to 1983 it also owned the meatpacking Armour & Company.
Mr. Gilvar, 40, who was previously a business development manager for a Dutch media conglomerate, quickly expanded Garde Robe; the company relocated it to its present location in 2007.
In 2004 Dial, a subsidiary of the German manufacturing conglomerate Henkel, expanded the initiative with a contest for independent inventors called "Quest for the Best". Contestants were invited to submit patented (or patent-pending) ideas in certain product categories.
Next week, they are expected to prevail in a Senate vote to repeal new rules, backed by the White House, that would enable large media conglomerates to expand.
