Tanoto is the founder of Royal Golden Eagle, a manufacturing conglomerate that has more than $40 billion in assets. The Singapore-based group owns palm and timber plantations, natural gas facilities, and textile factories. Tanoto's family office, Pacific Eagle, owns property across London, Singapore, Shanghai and Munich.
Tanoto's wealth derives from Royal Golden Eagle, the conglomerate he founded which has various wood pulp, palm oil, paper, textiles, trading and energy businesses. RGE companies hold more than $40 billion in assets, according to its website.
Sateri produces viscose fibre, with revenue of $3.3 billion in 2023. Its valued using the price-to-sales multiple of publicly-traded peers.
April makes forestry products, with revenue of $1.2 billion in 2024. Its valued using the average enterprise value-to-sales and Ebitda multiples of publicly-traded peers.
Asia Symbol is a China-based forestry products group with revenue of $3.2 billion in 2023. Its valued using the price-to-sales and earnings multiples of publicly-traded peers.
Apical is a palm oil trading business with revenue of $5.9 billion in 2024. Its valued using the average enterprise value-to-sales and EBITDA multiples of publicly-traded peers.
Tissue-maker Vinda is valued using its August 2024 acquisition cost of $3.6 billion.
RGE's Pacific Energy Corp. is building a gas export terminal in British Columbia, Canada, as a cost estimated to be $8.8 billion in 2025. It's valued at half of that cost to account for debt.
Corporate entities within Tanoto's family office, Pacific Eagle, own a real estate portfolio. The entities are valued at their 2024 book value of $1.7 billion. Other investments made by the family office are excluded because their value could not be determined.
Liabilities of $3.4 billion were included to account for debt at holding companies whose financial records are not publicly available, based on a discussion with a person familiar with the company's finances who did not wish to be identified because the information is private.
A spokesperson for RGE declined to comment on the calculation in April 2025.
Sukanto Tanoto was born in Indonesia in 1949, the eldest son of Chinese immigrants from Fujian province.
He joined his father's small oil and construction supply business in 1966 at the age of 17, after his Chinese school in Indonesia was forced to close. His father died soon after and he took over the running of the business. When prices jumped in the early 1970s during the oil price shock, his business boomed.
Noticing that Indonesia exported lumber to Japan and Taiwan, where it used to make plywood that was sent back to Indonesia, he decided to construct his own mill, which was completed in 1975.
In 1979, he began planting palm oil in Indonesia after seeing that success of the industry in neighboring Malaysia.
In the mid 1990s, he relocated his family and the company's headquarters to Singapore.
By the 2010s, the group had extensive interests in palm oil, pulp and energy across Asia, including in China, but it was also being linked to environmental issues by a variety of non-profit groups, including Greenpeace. In 2015, it released a sustainability policy that committed it to eliminating deforestation from its supply chain.