A1GP Lippo Village Circuit Design

Posted on December 28, 2008 by Alist

As I mentioned in previous blog about F1 GP at Singapore roads, Lippo Village (a.k.a Lippo Karawaci) will host A1 Grand Prix on 6-8 February 2009 for Indonesia.

Years ago, all racings as well as A1GPs were hosted at Sentul Circuit on Southern Jakarta. Somehow Lippo Group was interested in hosting this event and surprisingly will be held on Lippo Karawaci city roads every year at least for 5 years ahead. This brings Lippo Village as equal as Monte Carlo, Macau, and Singapore as the hosts of city-street racing.

For Jakarta residents, Lippo Village (Karawaci) at Tangerang seems a bit far, 30 km from Central Jakarta. Driving car to Karawaci will take average 25 minutes of time. Is known as a small city developed by Lippo Group, this area is complete with residences, mall, hospital, schools, and university. The best place to live in my opinion – apart from its distance. Some places are well-known for Jakarta people to come: Siloam Hospital, Universitas Pelita Harapan, Supermal Karawaci, and Benton Junction.

Circuit Design

The most interesting part of this design is that it incorporates many existing parts of the city. Even more, they are building new roads to create a more dramatic racing.

Continue reading →

Singapore Banks in Indonesia (a.k.a Who owns Indonesian Banks?)

Posted on December 25, 2008 by Alist

When Singaporean travelling around Jakarta these days, they will be feeling like at home country Singapore. Easily can they find Singapore bank’s logo in every corner of the city. As information, only 6 locally-incorporated full banks are operated in Singapore, each has strong fundamentals. But banks live in that tiny country must expand in order to keep growing.

After some mergers and acquisitions in Indonesia banks since 2000, some local banks have been acquired by foreign capital investors (read as Singapore’s). Before 2007, those acquisitions were still on paper-based and management levels. But you can see in recent years that those banks one by one is changing their logos to inline with their motherships.

Bank Buana, taken by United Overseas Bank, now become UOB Buana.
Bank NISP, taken by Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation, now become OCBC NISP
.
Bank Mitsubishi Buana, taken by Development Bank of Singapore (DBS Bank), now become DBS Indonesia
Bank Danamon, taken by Asia Financial Indonesia (Deutche Bank + Temasek Singapore), still named Danamon.