Wherever you looked in Myanmar, he and the sprawling Asia World conglomerate he had founded were involved in some project, often with Chinese partners.
There are extended sequences involving ninja warriors, possible extraterrestrials and a huge monster which stamps on a laboratory "belonging to the shadowy world conglomerate Chipco".
Thanks to the deep pockets of DP World – the project's owner and a subsidiary of the Dubai World conglomerate – 170,000-tonne megaships will be gracing the Thames estuary by the end of next year.
DP World, the ports operator owned by the troubled Dubai World conglomerate, has decided to list its shares in London because it is unhappy with the valuation placed on the business in Dubai.
The sanctioned figures include Mr. Aung Ko Win, the airline owner and associate of Myanmar's former second in command, Gen. Maung Aye; and U Tun Myint Naing, known as Steven Law, the son of a 1970s opium trafficker and the managing director of the Asia World conglomerate, which has a stake in Yangon's Traders Hotel, a favorite of well-heeled travelers.
They are right to point out that management matters enormously: most emerging-world conglomerates are far better run today than they were a decade ago.
Tarun Khanna of Harvard Business School has argued that emerging-world conglomerates are transient phenomena: they have thrived because businesses need to compensate for the underdeveloped nature of the local market (or fill in "institutional voids", as he puts it).
Rich-world conglomerates did relatively well in the financial crisis: Christin Rudolph and Bernhard Schwetzler of Leipzig Graduate School of Management calculate that the conglomerate discount fell during the crisis from 12.7% to 6% in western Europe and from 10.8% to 7.2% in America.
Emerging-world conglomerates such as the Tata group have also succeeded in the rich world.J. Ramachandran of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore says all this shows that conglomerates are not just a symptom of a difficult business climate; they have advantages that more streamlined firms lack.
Mr. Damodaran said few of the world's conglomerates, if any, are superstars.
