14. TAN SRI LIM WEE CHAI Flagship: Top Glove Corp Bhd Net worth: RM5.25bil

LIM, the founder and executive chairman of Top Glove, saw his net worth surging by 38.6% or RM1.5bil, moving up four notches to 14th spot on the list of 40 richest Malaysians in 2018.

Thanks to his aggressive business strategy by ramping up with more factories, the market valuation for Top Glove remains high at price-to-earnings (PE) of

30 times.

Financially, the company has been registering steady growth with a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.1% in revenue and 20.9% for profit after tax over the past 17 years.

Top Glove continues to dominate as the world’s largest rubber glove manufacturer producing 60.5 billion gloves per year with 40 factories and 648 production lines and serves a network of over 2,000 customers in over 195 countries.

For the next two years, Top Glove is already embarking to add two factories in Malaysia producing 9.6 billion pieces of gloves as well as two factories in Thailand and Vietnam to produce 5.2 billion pieces of gloves for a total of 14.8 billion pieces or 25% additional new capacity.

By end-2020, the Group is poised to produce a whopping 75.3 billion pieces of rubber gloves per year.

Top Glove has also set its next level goals including increasing its world market share to 30% by 2020 and becoming a Fortune Global 500 Company by 2040.

It is also aggressively expanding its business scope and on the lookout for mergers and acquisitions opportunities in related industries.

As part of its expansion pursuit, the group has acquired the entire stake of printing and packaging supplier Eastern Press Sdn Bhd for RM46.3mil cash in 2017.

It also made major acquisitions in 2018 namely a 100% stake in surgical glove maker Aspion Sdn Bhd for RM1.37bil, an 85% stake in latex-based product maker Duramedical Sdn Bhd for RM2.85mil and had allocated an initial investment of RM75mil for the first phase of its condom production.

Among the highlights on Top Glove in 2018 include the discovery of irregularities in certain Aspion balance sheet items, in particular its inventories, plant and machinery and the overvaluation of the acquisition price of Aspion as well as the removal of Low Chin Guan as executive director of Top Glove.

Low is a director of Aspion as well as managing director of Adventa Capital Pte Ltd, the former parent company of Aspion.