Life after the crisis: Asia moves on
Korea: Hanwha Chemical Corporation
Indonesia: Astra International
Thailand: Total Access Communications
Sampoerna, Indonesia's second-largest cigarette producer, was hit hard when the Indonesian rupiah crashed as almost all of its debt was foreign. But its canny survival plan - it has already rescheduled or repurchased roughly half of its overall debt - has been astonishingly successful.
And it is one of the few companies with entirely domestic sales and entirely foreign debt to emerge from the crisis without having to declare a default.
However, it was touch and go for over a year when it could not make payments on its $150 million syndicated loan. During this time analysts feared that the lending banks would move to call the facility.
But after nine months of discussions, Sampoerna resolved the issue this June. It has rescheduled the remaining $140 million of its loan into a single tranche through to 2002 with amortized principal payments paid at the commercial interest rates of Sibor+340 basis points and Sibor+370bp in 2002.
Sampoerna has also had another worry: a price increase the government imposed on tobacco.