Business transformations are highly risky and can go horribly wrong. One home-grown example is Boto, which was one of the world’s largest artificial Christmas tree makers. In 2002 it sold this profitable business to Carlyle, a private equity outfit, to invest in an animation firm, in which it had limited experience.

The company was renamed Imagi and fell into a multiyear run of losses. A consortium led by Francis Leung, ex-chairman of Citigroup Asia, rescued the firm in 2011 when it almost ran out of cash.