Borrowing essential to maintain liquidity - LOLC MD

Sanjeevi JAYASURIYA

Managing growth, scale and complexity have paved the way for emergence of local entrepreneurs in the 20th century. The new birth of economy with open policy led to creation of conglomerates.

“We are an economy in transition as post war development drive is in line with economic trends. The second half performance is expected to exceed the first half performance with positive contributions from the agricultural sector”, LOLC Group Managing Director Kapila Jayawardena said.

The key drivers of conglomerates will be people, funding, risk management, governance, re-engineering the business and being responsible corporate citizen.

While sourcing professional talent, empowering and focus to align people with corporate strategy it is necessary to give management for foreign operators even for a shorter time, he said at the LBR LBO CEO Forum on “Fast tracking to conglomeration” held in Colombo on Tuesday.

Sri Lanka’s financial sector will not be able to fully absorb the external shocks and therefore borrowing from foreign countries is essential to maintain liquidity. In today’s context moving towards sustainable office with a triple bottom line oriented diversification strategy is important, Jayawardena said.

Sunshine Holdings PLC recorded a tremendous growth in multiple sectors in an emerging economy. The key decision to build and expand the company was to partner with TATA company where the key strategy being horning skills and building business, Sunshine Holdings Director Shyam Sathasivam said.

The company went beyond entering into a partnership by going public to tap private equity. Building multi national relationships, acquisitions and willingness to invest have paid Sunshine Holdings to be a strong diversified organization.