Need A Few More Great CEOs For GLCs

What's the difference between a good CEO and a great one? In Malaysia there are not many great CEOs for sure. Many of our top companies are still family controlled companies, and generally its very rare to get family members that are also great CEOs. Family owned enterprises are usually started by a great entrepreneur but as you mushroom into a listed company, many have problems in letting go. An entrepreneur may be able to build a business from scratch to earning RM50m profit a year, but as you expand and scale up, you need a professional person with the vision and execution ability to bring the company to the next level. Ask many CEOs, they don't even talk about what is the next level.



If you put it to a vote, Nazir Razak should probably come in as the best CEO Malaysia has seen for the past 20 years. All you have to do is to track where Bumiputra Commerce Bank was at 10 years ago. If you put that side by side with Maybank, Affin, heck even Public Bank ... the trajectory and the path taken was so different.

Its just a coincidence that CIMB is now a Khazanah owned company. Even with the recent GLC transformation programme, we still see a dire lacking in the top honchos when compared to Nazir.

Let's cut to the chase, what makes a great CEO?

1. Integrity: Always do the right thing regardless of sentiment and never compromise your core values. If you cannot build trust and engender confidence with your stakeholders you cannot succeed. No amount of talent can overcome illegal, immoral or otherwise ill-advised actions.

2. Courage / Excellent Decision Making Skills / Decisiveness: As a CEO you will live or die by the quality of the decisions you make. These decisions are like the ship's mast, every bit that you do steers the ship in a certain direction. He/she must also know when to back down and be able to accept it when he realises its a mistake.

3. Ability to Focus: If you cannot focus you cannot perform at the level necessary to remain in the C-suite for very long. The ability to do nothing more than understand, and lock-onto priorities will place you in the top 10% of all executives.

4. Leveraging Experience: Inexperience, a lack of maturity, needing to be the center of attention, not recognizing limitations, a lack of judgment, an inferior knowledge base, or any number of other common mistakes made by rookie CEOs can cause your house of cards to fall. If you don’t have the experience personally, hire it, contract it, but by all means acquire it. Great CEOs surround themselves with tier-one talent and the best advisors money can buy. They don’t make uniformed or ill-advised decisions in a vacuum.

5. Command Presence: Great CEOs possess a strong presence and bearing. They are unflappable individuals that never let you see them sweat (unless of course it serves a purpose). Everything from how they carry themselves to how they speak and dress messages that they are in charge.

6. Embracing Change: Great CEOs have a strong bias to action. They don’t rest upon past accomplishments and are always seeking to improve through change and innovation. In today’s fast paced and competitive environment those CEOs who don’t openly embrace change will often be shown the door prior to the expiration of their initial employment contract.

7. Brand Champions: Great CEOs understand branding at every level. They seek to build not only a dominant corporate brand, but also a strong personal brand. CEOs that are not well branded on a personal basis, or who let their corporate brand fall into decline will not survive.

8. Resourcefulness / Boundless Energy: Great CEOs have a boundless amount of energy. They are positive in their outlook, and their attitude is contagious. A low energy CEO is not motivating, convincing or credible.

9. Business Acumen: Great CEOs have a deep understanding of the business and a strong orientation toward profit. Great CEOs possess what often appears to be a sixth sense or an almost instinctive feel for what the company needs to do to make money and remain competitive.

10. People Acumen: Great CEOs have a nose for talent…They understand how to recruit, develop and deploy talent while focusing on applying the best talent to the best opportunities. They also know when it’s time to make changes and cut losses as needed.

11. Organizational Acumen: Great CEOs know how to engender trust, know when and how to share information, and are expert listeners. They develop strong and positive corporate cultures driven to performance by aligned motivations. They can quickly diagnose whether the organization is performing at full potential, delivering on commitments, and whether the company is changing and growing versus just operating.

12. Curiosity: Great CEOs possess a powerful motivation to increase their knowledge base and to convert their learning into actionable initiatives. They question, challenge, confront and are never accepting of the status quo.

13. Intellectual Capacity: Great CEOs are also great thinkers both at the strategic and tactical level. They are quick on their feet and know how to get to the root of an issue faster than anyone else.

14. Global Mindset: Regardless of the geographical boundaries of the current business model great CEOs think globally. Limited thinking results in limited results. Whether global thinking is applied to capital formation, supply-chain issues, business development, strategic partnering, distribution, or any number of other areas, those CEOs who don’t grasp the importance of thinking globally will not endure. Great CEOs are externally oriented, hungry for knowledge of the world and adept at connecting developments and spotting patterns.

15. Never Quit: Great CEOs refuse to lose…They have an insatiable appetite for accomplishment and results and while they may reengineer or change direction they will never lose sight of the end game.

16. Execution: The decisions and strategy of a CEO will only be as effective if they have the implementation and monitoring skills to execute ideas and follow through. The great CEOs will only recruit managers that has proven themselves time and again in seeing through a project or transmitting a vision into reality effectively.

17. Not Staying Still: Too many CEOs end up just managing their companies in the same pond. Great CEOs will always be aware of the need to move up to the next level. Always be concerned about your business model and platform of activities, building initiatives or recruiting talent to scale up the business.

18. Fair: Too many CEOs are just intent on finding ways to reward themselves. A great CEO will devise ways to reward performers in a big way. Loyalty can only go so far. To build great companies, you need a core team that is well rewarded to see through the long term vision, and be paid well in the process. You cannot build value into the company when talent keeps going out the door - there has to be continuity.

19: Empowering / A Strong BoD: You need to have a fair and strong board of directors and not staffed by cronies. You can have a great CEO but he/she will not be effective if the BoD gets in the way. The BoD is there to oversee not micro manage. Just as a great CEO will be able to empower talented employees to achieve greater heights, so too the BoD must empower the CEO to do his/her job.

20. Foresight: Great CEOs are prepared to create their own luck by cultivating an ability to see opportunities for their company and to make the deals that convert those opportunities into realities. Some things that may seem like amazing foresight are actually the result of the hard work and discipline it takes to constantly look forward to build a successful company. Great CEOs must also constantly develop new products to build and retain a customer base. Foresight is also the ability to hire and retain the right people, looking ahead toward the growth of the company.

Nazir scores brilliantly in almost every category (no, I am not putting myself up for a job at CIMB). If only we have another 4 Nazir Razaks to turn things around faster. Food for thought. If we have another 4 Nazirs, what would he be doing at these 5 GLCs??? I would exclude him from some GLCs because there might be very little he can do there, such as Tenaga or Malaysia Airports. I also would not put him at Maybank as the stegosaurus will take too long and too much work to turn around. I will select the 4 GLCs that I think will benefit the most:

1) UEM World / Iskandar - I think the Nusajaya project started way before the two Singapore IRs. The bloody casinos are up and running and where are we??? Oops, forget about the Middle East partners now, let's look to China and India. Execution, execution, timeline, goalposts, rollout scheduling, ... for every project delays there will be 1,001 excuses, and therein lies our problem, we are always ready with excuses. I think Nusajaya is a brilliant concept, but seriously, I hope its not taking another 10 years to rollout, by that time I think Indonesia may have transformed Batam into another Nusajaya already with a bridge linking up both islands.

2) Proton - It will be a short stay for Nazir at Proton. Just sell the thing to another major car maker that can carry the platform we have and leverage on it. We take a minority stake say 30% and just let the thing run by someone else that have the regional or global marketing, design, distribution and cost efficiencies to run this thing. Close shop.

3) PLUS - As it is, PLUS is already Asia's largest listed expressway owner and toll operator, easily beating out the two listed Chinese firms in HK. Its an under leveraged vehicle. Nazir will come in, start up a "financing unit" within the firm to tap bonds and capital to buy, invest, build new tollways all across Asia. Its all a matter of "funding the thing" properly. Nazir will keep enlarging the portfolio by hiving off profitable tollways into REIT like instruments to free up capital. PLUS will be 3 times the size of what it is now within 3 years. Macquarie Infra here we come.

4) Sime Darby - Nazir will do wonders here. Just break off the plantation unit and rethink the business model. Why are we just in palm oil??? Sell huge plots of land to Sime Property and hive that off as an independent unit as well - I am sure Nazir will buy IJM Land and SP Setia and roll them all into a proper behemoth with a lot of claws and market edge.



p/s photos: Ririn Dwi Aryanti

No, Not Lost In Space ...

Readers of this blog may have been speculating that I might have been abducted by aliens or taken away to Sg Buloh for some "gentle questioning sessions" - ... actually hopped onto a plane and have been in Sydney, still am... do not have access to the internet, so the postings will be infrequent.

Thankfully, there is the monthly asset class returns from The Capital Spectator - gives me something to talk about without too much work.

After a long period of flattish performance, commodities have started a move last month. Though it may sound silly, I think it is VERY EASY for this kind of asset class moves to turn into a wave, go long on CPO. I do think the rumour of Sime Darby selling 10% to China-interest has a high degree of credibility - and of course it is very good for Sime Darby. Though I did not like many of Sime Darby's M&A and subsequent integration plans, it is still the number one plantation company in the world. Many also may not be aware that it has been building very important port facilities and have a few very exciting long term ventures in China already. Let's just say that Sime Darby may be reinventing themselves to latch onto China as the platform for their next growth phase for the next 10 years. Yes, Sime Darby is a BUY now, no time to do a "Why I Like..." but close enough.

Curiously though, there have been more interest in bonds and relates papers last month according to the table. More significantly, the REITs have showed signs of weakness after a spectacular run for the past 3 months. This may indicate that we may have recovered from the lows, now the euphoria is over, some of these REITs are still showing tremendous leverage and debt difficulty.

p/s photos: Jocelyn Lukos

New York Roadshow By JP Morgan

J.P. Morgan's Malaysia Corporate Access Days

November 5-6 (Thu-Fri)

Grand Hyatt New York, 109 East 42nd Street at Grand Central Terminal, New York

• Roundtable discussions, presentations and Q&A sessions with Malaysian government officials and regulators
• 1x1 meetings with participating Malaysian corporates

Senator Tan Sri Amirsham Abdul Aziz, Chairman - National Economic Advisory Council
Dato' Ooi Sang Kuang, Deputy Governor, Bank Negara Malaysia
Dato' Yusli Mohamed Yusoff, CEO, Bursa Malaysia

Participating Corporates

Air Asia (AIRA MK) - Dato Kamarudin Meranun, Group Deputy CEO

Axiata Group (AXIATA MK) - 1. Dato' Sri Jamaludin Ibrahim, President & Chief Executive Officer / 2. Dato’ Yusof Annuar Yaacob, Group Chief Financial Officer

Bursa Malaysia (BURSA MK) - Puan Nadzirah Abd Rashid, CFO

IJM Corporation (IJM MK) - Datuk Krishnan Tan Boon Seng, Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director

Public Bank (PBK MK) - Mr. Leong Kwok Nyem, Chief Operating Officer

Sime Darby (SIME MK) - 1. Azhar bin Abdul Hamid, EVP, Plantation / 2. Mohamad Hishammudin bin Hamdan, Group Head, Strategy & GBD / 3. Shariman Alwani bin Mohamed Nordin, Gp Head, Value Mgt & IR

S P Setia (SPSB MK) - 1. Ms. Wong Sheue Yann, Head, Corporate Services - Group Corporate Services / 2. Mr. Cheong Heng Leong - Manager, Investor Relations - Group Corporate & Finance Division

YTL Corp Berhad (YTL MK) - Tan Sri Dato' Dr Francis Yeoh, Group Managing Director

p/s photo: Chrissie Chau

Decoding PNB's Investment Strategy Ahead

Time to try and decode PNB's investing strategy, as some have voiced concerns over its last few fixed priced funds, and its ability to maintain those returns. Some of the information have been extracted from articles in The Edge.

Four of the 10 PNB funds are known as fixed-price funds where the price per unit is fixed at RM1 regardless of how the market performed. There is a history behind this practice. The first PNB fund, Amanah Saham Nasional, was launched as a fixed-price fund in 1981 but it reverted back to market pricing in 1991 as per the trust deed. Soon after that, Amanah Saham Bumiputera, a fixed-price fund was launched in 1990 for investors not accustomed to market fluctuations. Altogether, there are four such funds by PNB.

Fixed-price funds are practically risk-free as investors get back whatever they put in if or when they redeem their investments. On top of that, you get generous returns of 7% to 8% every year. It is a very good deal indeed but on the other side of the coin, the actual value of the underlying investments is unknown, unlike other unit trust funds where you know the value of your investments at any point in time. The balance sheets of fixed-price funds are not disclosed in their annual reports, and the Securities Commission, the body governing the unit trust industry, grants these funds various exemptions from its guidelines on unit trust funds.

How can a fund keep paying 6%-8% a year in dividend, invested 60%-90% in local equities, and will always have a fixed price of RM1 NAV. You cannot get that anywhere else, can you? Is anybody even a bit curious? PNB is not almighty. What about the 1997-1998 Asian crisis, the Internet meltdown, the 9-11 period, the SARS debacle, and the very recent subprime global meltdown ... surely we all saw that equity prices were hammered for an extended period.

The way PNB would argue is that they do income smoothing, or something along those lines. That in good year, say they get an 11% return, they will keep some of the gains and declare only 7% in dividends. The excess would go into a special performance account to top up future years that they do not have stellar dividends. That sounds alright except that you still did not know the exact real NAV of these funds.

PNB could very well be paying 6%-8% dividend every year on these fixed price funds but the real NAV may be deteriorating below RM1.00, and we don't know because its not known. Should we be concerned if the actual collective real NAV of these fixed priced funds were to be say RM0.97, RM0.93 and RM0.88 for 2006, 2007 and 2008 respectively??? We can only assume that their real NAV is healthy.

In good or bad markets, the funds have consistently returned steady dividends in the high single digit. But the fact is, the returns are lower today than in the 1980s and 1990s when dividends and bonuses were in the double-digit realm (as high as 20% for ASN in 1981). But no one is complaining about the 7% to 8% annual return today considering that investments in the fixed-price funds are essentially risk-free — you get your principal back when you sell your units.

PNB is a unique institution. I can understand how they can generate double digit return in the early years (PNB was established in 1979). Pernas, which had been acquiring public-listed companies under foreign control, was compelled to transfer 13 of its companies, including Sime Darby Bhd and Malaysia Mining Corp Bhd, to PNB at cost. Malayan Banking Bhd was transferred to PNB after Bank Negara Malaysia stepped in to restructure the bank in 1967 following a bank run, which wiped out 40% of its deposit base. PNB also benefited from grants and interest-free loans from the government to facilitate the acquisitions. By 1989, PNB had transferred to ASN sizeable stakes in various listed entities. Similarly, ASB’s assets comprised those transferred from PNB. Furthermore, as a bumiputera institution and one of the biggest institutional investors in town, PNB is said to have been allotted shares in companies en route to listing at attractive prices, given the need to meet the 30% bumiputera shareholding requirement.

In the 90s PNB still had its channels as many big companies got listed, and IPOs generally performed outstandingly during the early 90s bull run. Over the last few yers, these mega IPOs have dried up. PNB will now have to rely on corporate finance and restructuring to generate value to its stable of companies. Hence, arguably, the Sime Darby's mega plantation scheme is the start of many more projects under PNB's auspices. PNB will now have to consolidate its stable of companies, put them into synergistic groupings to create more value. All that is very necessary to continue to support these fixed priced funds that still give 6%-8% dividend income every year and can always be redeemed at RM1.00 par.

So, the scepticism over PNB's ability to maintain these returns is genuine and needed to be asked. As to whether they can do it depends on execution, the advisors they have, and how astute they are at not just managing funds but including appointing the right people to manage the synergies and put the collective resources to work. Sime Darby is still digesting the huge plantation firms acquired. It is imperative that PNB maintain a very high standard of professionalism in its retention of top management executives in running these merged entities. PNB has to minimise the political interference to have political appointees - it has to manage with clear transparency with global best practices as their mantra.

The next big project for PNB has to be its many property companies under its stable. PNB have SP Setia and Mah Sing, and its stakes in these companies have been "rising strategically". In contrast, PNB has accumulated almost 20% in Mah Sing and has direct and indirect interests of close to 32.9% in S P Setia. Another company that PNB has bought a stake in is I-Bhd, where it has 18.1%. Sime Darby Property could be better placed in a property conglomerate as it has the largest landbank in the country. Sime Darby’s landbank in the Klang Valley stretches from the Guthrie Corridor in the north of Selangor, to Putrajaya, Seremban and Port Dickson. The 37,000 acres in its landbank is about as big as Kuala Lumpur and three times the size of Putrajaya.

PNB took Petaling Garden Bhd, Island & Peninsular Bhd and Pelangi Bhd private between 2005 and 2007. The three collectively own 7,200 hectares of land. Apart from land, PNB also has buildings in prime locations that can easily be packaged into a real estate investment fund (REIT). Within its fold is also Syarikat Perumahan Pegawai Kerajaan Sdn Bhd (SPPK), which has a good property development record. Because of its huge landbank, Mah Sing and S P Setia are said to be possible vehicles for PNB to unlock value.

It looks increasingly like PNB want Sime Darby to concentrate on plantations. Hiving off SDP to a merged Mah Sing-SP Setia vehicle would probably yield great value to Sime Darby and ramps up PNB's control in Mah Sing-SP Setia. PNB holds about 53% stake in Sime Darby, which wholly owns Sime Property.

Imagine if PNB injects the three property developers – Island & Peninsular Bhd, Petaling Garden Bhd and Pelangi Bhd – all privatised between 2005 and 2007, as well into the merged SPSetia-Mah Sing vehicle. Its a mega property concern for sure. The good thing is that it can consolidate its landbank in one major masterplan and plan much better strategically. It will be much better capitalised as well to venture into new markets with various "brands" for the right markets.

I doubt very much PNB will take SP Setia or Mah Sing private. Injecting what they have into SP Setia-Mah Sing would make much more sense. The whole shebang would require massive amount of capital for development and venturing into new markets, you wouldn't want to take that onto PNB's balance sheets as we could be talking in billions of ringgit every few years.

Other institutional shareholders of SP Setia include the Employees Provident Fund with 12%, Capital Group of the US also with 12%, and other foreign shareholders which hold another 14% in the company. On June 18, SP Setia announced the appointment of two nominees of PNB – Tan Sri Wan Mohd Zahid Mohd Noordin and Datuk Noor Farida Mohd Ariffin – as its new non-independent and non-executive directors. SP Setia’s two executive directors – Khor Chap Jen and Teow Leong Seng – resigned from their positions on the same day. However, both remain with the company in their existing capacity as executive vice-president in charge of property division (central) and executive vice-president/CEO of international business development respectively.


p/s photo: Maya Karin

Why I Don't Like Sime Darby Now

Sime Darby with the new management, and the merged entity as the biggest plantations company in the world, has stepped into a new era of management. And sad to say, its been a "C-" in the report card.

a) Sime Darby would usually make up the top 5 of any rankings on management. The recent FinanceAsia survey on Best Managed Company, Sime Darby habuk pun tarak... apa macam ni? I mean, for Sime Darby NOT to even make the top 10, something must be very wrong, it cannot be that ALL people are colluding to fuck with you. To be fair, Sime Darby still ranked well in corporate social responsibility and corporate governance sub categories.

Best managed company		Votes
1)	Public Bank	36
2)	CIMB	28
3)	IOI Corp	15
4)	YTL	12
5)	Axiata (TMI)	11
6)	Digi	10
7)	SP Setia	9
8)	Genting	8
9)	Media Prima	7

b) TheLabu Affair & The IJN coup attempt - Analysts and industry executives do not think that Malaysia needs two airports located within 10km of each other. KLIA has some 3,290ha for aeronautical activities, which allows for four satellite buildings to be built around the main terminal. Currently, only one has been built.

The IJN affair was even more unscrupulous, it was so obvious its the land that Sime was eyeing. Sime Darby has lost the plot when it comes to deciding who to go to bed with. It seems that no one is thinking of how Sime Darby will appear to the public and investors - imagine if you are a concert promoter, whether you bring on Amy Grant or go with Amy Winehouse has a lot of differing consequences. It seems that Sime's only concern is that "well, if we get this one, we will make tons of money", "screw what the public thinks", "screw what the fucking masterplan is", "screw what the government is thinking, all is negotiable one la" ... That is the kind of feeling I get, and I am sure many others will be perceiving that way of Sime Darby's new era.

c) Investors will accord a premium if management is consistent, clear, strategically composed and adds value. The new management is simply clumsy (jumping into this and that project with abandon), arrogant (fuck care what people may think, its the "we are so big, who the fuck should we care, even the government must give me face" attitude), unscrupulous (I mean seriously, IJN???... how can you make money WITHOUT patients being charged more than they are NOW???), increasingly heartless (pun intended), callous (look at the grouses by many of the employees of the merged plantation firms), manipulative (re: regurgitate previous grouses by employees), ruthless and predatory Sime Darby.

d) Yes, predatory is the key word, does that suit what Sime Darby is trying to achieve? Just look at the merged plantation units under Sime Darby. The level of discontent among them is still very high. So many capable staff have left the company already. If the staff from the merged entities were treated as equal, if they were respected for their contributions and eased into the overall Sime Darby's culture ... why would they leave, some may leave anyway, but not in the numbers we have seen over the past 12 months. Look at the projects they bidded for, they way they went about it.

Why I don't like Sime Darby has little to do with their fundamentals (well, I wouldn't be buying Sime on fundamentals even now... conglomerates ALWAYS under perform during a recovery stage ... too big, too many fingers in too many pies, uneven recovery, needs huge liqudity to move, etc..). When the soul of a company is tainted, not much good can come out of it, just 'accidents and mishaps' waiting to happen.

Well, there goes my chance to be employed by Sime Darby. If I may pass one word for management and the board to meditate and mull on, its this word: HUMILITY ... think of how the company came about, what made it great, the contributions of the many employees at the many merged units, ...


p/s photos: Zhang Jing Chu