Indonesia’s richest billionaires lose $5.9 billion as MSCI warning triggers record two-day stock rout

The combined fortune of Indonesia’s three richest people, Robert Budi Hartono, Prajogo Pangestu and Low Tuck Kwong, fell by about $5.9 billion over two trading days after index provider MSCI proposed a downgrade of the country’s stock market that would remove it from its main global indexes, triggering the steepest two-day drop on record.

MSCI said on Friday it had launched a consultation on moving Indonesia from “emerging market” to “standalone” status, a harsher outcome than the “frontier” downgrade it threatened in January. The Jakarta Composite Index fell 11.6% on Friday, the largest one-day drop since the 1998 Asian financial crisis, wiping about $65 billion from the market. It fell a further 3.6% on Monday to a six-year low, and the two-day fall exceeded any in 1998, Reuters reported. The exchange cut the daily limit on individual stock losses to 7% from 15%, and the rupiah weakened to 18,030 per dollar.

By Monday, Robert Budi Hartono, the cigarette tycoon, was worth $12.4 billion, down from $15.5 billion before the selloff, Forbes’ real-time data showed. Timber-to-energy tycoon Prajogo Pangestu lost $2.2 billion, and Singapore-born coal billionaire Low Tuck Kwong lost $600 million. All three have lost heavily this year. Forbes had Hartono at about $21.4 billion, Prajogo at $39.5 billion and Low at $22.3 billion at the end of 2025, before Indonesian stocks fell nearly 40%, the worst performance of any market. Low and his daughter also sold a 30.25% stake in Bayan Resources to a local tycoon’s company recently.

MSCI’s concern is ownership. It has said shareholder disclosure rules could obscure who really owns listed companies, weaken transparency and raise the risk of improper trading. Many listed companies are tightly held by founders, families or conglomerates, leaving few shares for the public to trade. MSCI said “significant concerns remain around market dysfunction, including continued suspected coordinated trading behavior and lack of evidence of meaningful enforcement.” Indonesia’s financial regulator announced sanctions after the warning, with fines totaling 2.1 trillion rupiah on those linked to alleged manipulation in shares of three firms that The Business Times reported are linked to Prajogo and the Widjaya family’s Sinar Mas Group. The Indonesia Stock Exchange said it will remove companies with highly concentrated ownership from the benchmark index, and the index recovered some losses on Tuesday morning.

The stakes are high for a country that has already had its sovereign rating outlooks cut to negative by Moody’s and Fitch. A standalone classification would remove Indonesian stocks from MSCI’s major indexes, forcing passive funds to sell, and would put Southeast Asia’s biggest economy in a group that includes Argentina, Lebanon, Palestine, Ukraine and Zimbabwe. MSCI will take feedback until the end of April 2027 and announce a decision by June 30. Goldman Sachs strategists said avoiding reclassification “will require clear evidence that the announced reforms have been consistently implemented.”

The tycoons have been moving money abroad. Bloomberg reported in September that the Hartono family has invested at least $1.4 billion overseas, though most assets remain at home. Prajogo’s Barito Renewables Energy offered $5 billion in July for Energy Development Corp, the Philippines’ largest geothermal company, and his Chandra Asri Pacific agreed in August to buy Jardine Cycle & Carriage’s Malaysian and Singaporean car dealerships for $208 million, Forbes reported.