‘Khazanah wasn’t serious about saving MAS’

Khazanah should be stopped from causing more damage and economic mischief.

COMMENT

My one reservation about the MAS-Air Asia deal is that it shows Khazanah Nasional Bhd, which is trustee to the nation’s wealth and therefore enforcer of how our assets are being managed, isn’t trying hard or serious enough to keep its policy national and strategic.

Diluting the nation’s share in MAS can also diminish what potential advantages the country can leverage by having a national airline.

Every country has one that it leverages on to give it comparative advantages. The share swap with Tony Fernandes is effectively paying protection money.

Give Tony shares in MAS in return of a pledge by him that he will not use AirAsia to compete with MAS.

It’s a payout to Tony in return for his promise not to work hard. It’s also the old game of carving out the monopoly board among business rivals. Better to cooperate rather than bludgeon each other.

So will MAS make a profit after it secures a promise from Tony to not disturb it?

The people at MAS appear to blame some unprofitable costs center (such as Firefly) for its losses.

They believe that removing this will turn MAS profitable plus having Tony and whoever else on board will allow MAS to benefit from their skills.

‘Close down Khazanah’

It’s more like a case of ‘better to keep friends close and enemies closer’.

I go to a friend’s burial not to pay my respects but to make sure he’s dead.

So keep Tony on board to ensure he’s not up to mischief which MAS people and by backward linkage, Khazanah people are incapable of dealing with.

My suggestion in this case is its better to fire more people at MAS and Khazanah.

Closing down Khazanah entirely would be a better solution so that they can’t do more damage and economic mischief.

Those brain boxes at Khazanah couldn’t figure out how to sort out the mess at MAS after identifying the causes?

You can only think of the shortcut way by bringing in outside help in the form of someone operating in the industry on a different business model?

You are making the mistake in assuming skills successful in one model are transferable into another.

Yes we all agree it’s the business acumen, it’s the entrepreneurial talent that are needed to help out MAS.

Because if it’s a question of only the amount of grey matter, then those existing in Khazanah alone can potentially turn out to a source of star business school professors.

Khazanah’s corporate frolics

After Idris Jala left, the man who was handed the responsibility of managing MAS is a top notch trained accountant from Australia.

He is a super clever person. Why isn’t this clever person not able to nurse back MAS into better health? Was he undermined by vested interests?

Or was MAS intentionally left to drown and the clever person made to run around like a headless chicken so that Khazanah could deliver the coup de grace to our national carrier?

Khazanah wasn’t serious about saving MAS. It wasn’t industrious enough and hence opted for the lazy man’s solution- bring in another person to solve the problem instead of doing it yourself.

When I talked to people at Finance Ministry, the general feeling is that blame for the surrendering of MAS shares should be attributed to Khazanah’s corporate frolics.

It was all Khazanah’s idea to have MAS’s shares swapped with that of AirAsia.

The main reason, which is now increasingly questioned, is that in that way, the government can secure the services of the miracle man Tony Fernandes.

Well, I think this is a stupid way of trying to solve MAS problems.

Tony Fernandes is good – we can grant him that, but good for AirAsia not necessarily for MAS.

The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman and a FMT columnist. This is an excerpt from his sakmongkolak47 blog.