Singapore's Olam in Forbes Fab 50 list

SINGAPORE - Supply chain manager and agricultural processing firm Olam International has been named one of the best publicly traded companies in Asia-Pacific.

Olam is the only Singapore firm to make this year's Forbes Asia Fab 50 list, which is dominated by Chinese and Indian firms.

The list recognises the top public firms in Asia which have shown good results in a time when global economy is slowing and growth is decelerating or non-existent.

Despite suffering a quarterly loss last year, Hong Kong's Noble Group recovered and made the list for the seventh time in a row, the longest any company has managed to stay on the Fab 50 list.

Some 23 firms from China made the list this year including Tingyi Holding Corporation, China Vanke, Want Want and Baidu.

Companies from India took up 11 spaces on the list, including IT software services and consulting firms like HCL and Tata Consultancy.

A number of companies which did well in the past saw their performances fall. Australia's Wesfarmers, India's Mahindra & Mahindra and Taiwan's HTC are among those which failed to make it back on the list this year.

To qualify for the list, companies needed to have an annual revenue or market cap of at least US$3 billion (S$3.78 billion).

South Korea had the third-largest group of companies on the list, with four entries.

Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand each had two companies, while Japan, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore each had one company that made the cut this year.