THE 2018 financial report for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) was enough to convince Erick Thohir that the number of state companies must be significantly reduced. In fact, the report brought some good news: total SOEs profits reached Rp210 trillion that year, or 12 percent more than the previous year. But the profits obscured a certain issue, namely that three quarters of the amount was made by only 15 companies.

Now, nine months after he took o