In November, ASEAN members are expected to sign the Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA), the world’s first comprehensive regional digital economy pact, covering nearly 680 million people. ASEAN’s digital economy is currently valued at around $300 billion and is projected to reach US$2 trillion by 2030. Together with RCEP and growing cross-border investment in infrastructure, energy and logistics, DEFA points to a broader trend - Southeast Asia is becoming increasingly integrated as a regional economy.
For Australian businesses, this changes the nature of the opportunity. A decade ago, success in Southeast Asia was largely about entering new markets. Today, it increasingly depends on the ability to operate across them, connecting supply chains, capital, talent and operating models that span national boundaries.
The challenge is no longer whether to enter Southeast Asia. It is whether organisations are built to operate across it. - David Olsson AM, International Director, Mallesons
This shift is being recognised not only by business leaders but also by policymakers across the region. At the 2026 Southeast Asia Oration, former Indonesian finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati argued that the growth model underpinning Southeast Asia's success is reaching its limits. Future prosperity, she suggested, will require greater productivity, capability and regional integration.
The implications will extend beyond government agreements. They are increasingly influencing how large companies structure investments and operations across the region.
SunCable's plan to generate solar power in the Northern Territory and export it to Singapore, via subsea cable through Indonesian waters, is a physical version of the same logic behind DEFA's digital one: one commercial proposition, three jurisdictions, financed and governed as a single system. The project remains pre-final-investment-decision and has faced real cost escalation and schedule pressure along the way, but the fact that a project of this kind can be conceived at all says something about where the region is heading.
When market entry is not enough
Most Australian businesses are still built around country-level decision-making. In many sectors, that remains unavoidable. Regulation, licensing, accreditation, taxation and political risk are still shaped nationally, and a general counsel or board considering market entry has every reason to insist that each jurisdiction be judged on its own facts.
Ramsay Health Care's move into Southeast Asia illustrates both the opportunity and the complexity of regional growth. When Ramsay formed its joint venture with Sime Darby in 2013, the ambition was explicitly regional from the outset: Ramsay's then managing director described the venture as providing ‘a solid platform for expansion and further acquisitions in the Asian health care sector.’[1]
As with many businesses operating across Southeast Asia, however, regional ambition does not remove the need to navigate different regulatory systems, market conditions and operating environments in each jurisdiction.
That starting point is closer to the norm than the exception for Australian companies expanding across the region. In the 2025 annual AustCham ASEAN and RMIT survey of Australian businesses in the region, roughly six in ten respondents run from a single-country base or a country office; fewer than one in four operate any form of regional headquarters.
Ramsay Health Care and Sime Darby Berhad, joint media release, March 2013.
Australian companies adapting to a networked region
Ramsay Health Care: established one of the most significant Australian healthcare investments in Southeast Asia.
Sonic Healthcare: applies common laboratory quality, accreditation and clinical governance systems across international pathology operations while preserving local brands and market relationships.
Worley: operates through a global delivery model, following customers and projects across jurisdictions rather than treating each market as a wholly separate capability build.
Macquarie: builds regional investment platforms across infrastructure, energy transition and digital assets, applying capital and structuring expertise across markets.
Building regional capability
Ramsay and Sonic followed different paths but illustrate a common theme. As Southeast Asia becomes more connected, competitive advantage increasingly depends not only on access to individual markets but also on the ability to operate across them.
By the time Ramsay Sime Darby Health Care was sold in 2023 at an enterprise value of roughly A$2 billion[2], the venture reflected the scale that Australian businesses can achieve when they build a sustained presence across Southeast Asia.
Capabilities, not just market presence
These case studies highlight the need for pan-Asian literacy. Language skills, cultural familiarity and local relationships in each market continues to be required, but they are no longer sufficient on their own.
Increasingly, value comes from a deep understanding of multiple markets and connecting them in a joined-up regional strategy. rather than operating in them separately. That requires governance, talent and operating models that work across borders.
Worley and Macquarie illustrate the same principle in engineering, infrastructure and energy transition platforms
Neither is principally exporting a commodity. Both export capital, project capability and systems integration across the jurisdictions they operate in.
Where this leaves the boardroom
Regulatory complexity and political risk remain real, while the region's politics are becoming more fragmented, with governments diverging on trade, investment screening and industrial policy. This isn’t a benign environment - sharper strategic competition, more active industrial policy, closer scrutiny of foreign investment and renewed concern about supply-chain resilience all sit alongside the integration story. For boards, that makes the capability question more important, not less: regional models need to be connected enough to capture value across borders, but resilient enough to withstand political, regulatory, cyber or security shocks.
Sri Mulyani's argument suggests that the region is becoming more integrated economically even as politics, regulation and security become more fragmented. Within this setting, productivity, resilience and institutional capability are increasingly the drivers of growth.
Australia's original challenge in the region was access, then awareness and understanding each market. The next phase is resilience and capability. Recent initiatives, including Australia’s Southeast Asia Strategy to 2040, Austrade's investment deal teams and Export Finance Australia's financing facilities, have sought to turn interest into more durable trade, investment and project pipelines.
Ramsay Health Care and Sime Darby Berhad, joint venture sale to Columbia Asia Healthcare, November 2023.
Board View: Questions directors should consider
- Are we managing a collection of country businesses or a regional operating system?
- Can governance, talent and capital move effectively across borders?
- Have we ever mapped risk exposure across our Southeast Asian operations as a single group, rather than market by market?
- Where does value in our Southeast Asian business actually arise?
- Are we building regional capability or simply expanding our footprint?
The opportunity in Southeast Asia is no longer simply to be present in more markets. It is to build organisations capable of executing a regional strategy and operating across multiple markets. For Australian boards and executives, that may become one of the defining strategic questions and opportunities of the decade ahead.
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