Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg

also been assigned to the shelves on the Corporate Law Authority to
gather dust and no reference is ever made to its findings. The estimates of
H U Beg committee would seem grossly under-estimated in 1997 because
of the massive growth in the private sector banking since 1993.
In post-nationalization era of the 1970, the leading industrial families
resorted to Double D strategy of dispersing and diversifying, taking pains
to camouflage their identity. A very glaring example is the House of Habib
which was reported to have 90 companies in its fold in 1984 but I could
identify only half of them.
The list of companies owned by the Ittefaq group, as found by the Beg
committee included 19 companies with estimated assets of Rs 10 billion. I
have identified at least 29 companies is this group. The efforts by big
groups to cover their tracks are made easy by the absence of any law
requiring them to disclose their assets, although for several years CLA has
been toying with feasibility of requiring the groups to publish consolidated
annual accounts.
In additions to the assets held in their own groups, several of these
leading industrialists also own equity in the blue chip multinationals over
KSE. For example, Babar Ali is Chairman, Hoechest Pakistan Ltd,
Siemens and Lever Brothers and Kasim Dada is Chairman of Burger
Paints. Smithkline and Brook Bond Ltd holding upto 25% equity in these
companies. However, the equity in the multinationals is not taken into
considration while ranking them for this study.
At least five groups namely Saigols, Nishat, the Hashoo group, Fateh and
Habib have revealed in interviews and annual reports to have companies
incorporated abroad. Thus Nasim Saigol has Kohinoor England, Nishat
has Nishat Europe and Newbury Mansha (Pvt) Ltd, Sadaruddin Hashwani
has Tempa Pak Ltd, Florida, Habib have AG Zurich and Habibsons while
Fateh group have subsidiaries in Hong Kong and Germany. Evidently ,
other groups too, must have incorporated companies abroad but no
refrence is ever made to them in their profiles and reports.
Lawrence J. White, in his book " The Industrial Concentration and Economic
power in Pakistan" had estimated that on the eve of nationalization 43 groups or
families owned 98 of the 197 non-financial companies listed on KSE, accounting
for 53% of the total assets represented on the stock exchange.
The tables on the next page give a comparative picture of the 22 families in
1970, as found by Lawrence White, their position in 1990 as established by
monthly Herald of June 1990 and their ranking in 1997 in WHO OWNS
PAKISTAN?
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