Charoen Pokphand Group (CP) is one of Thailand's largest companies and one of the first true Asian multinationals. The group's operations span more than 250 companies in 20 countries--largely in Thailand and China but also in Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and Cambodia--with more than 100,000 employees and sales of $13 billion. These operations are placed under two main business divisions--that of Production and Processing and that of Service. CP has also made an effort, unusual among Asian conglomerates, to achieve a degree of financial transparency, including publicly listing a number of its key businesses. These included CP Feedmill, which groups most of the CP's core feedmill and livestock--poultry, pigs, and tiger shrimp--businesses in Thailand, and, in Hong Kong, CP Pokphand, which oversees the group's vast livestock and feedmill holdings (some 200 subsidiaries) on the Chinese mainland. Other key CP holdings include TelecomAsia, challenger to the government run phone company in Bangkok, which has built a network of 2.6 million fiber optic telephone lines for the city; Siam Makro, the group's discount retail chain; Ek Chor China Motorcycle, the New York Stock Exchange-listed maker of motorcycles for the Chinese market; and Vinythai, a maker of polyvinylchloride and other petrochemicals, developed in partnership with Belgium's Solvay. Other holdings comprise retail stores--including a share in the Tesco Lotus supermarket chain and the 7-11 convenience store franchise for Thailand--and restaurants, including the group's Bua Baan fast-food concept featuring CP's own processed foods. Despite its diversified activities, the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s encouraged CP to restructure itself around a core focus of agribusiness and food operations through a new flagship company, Charoen Pokphand Foods. As such, the group has adopted a new slogan as the "Kitchen of the World." CP has long been led by Dhanin Chearavanont, son of one of the company's founding brothers.