How bad is Maybank's loss?

Tiger has followed Malayan Banking, closely over the years from 1978 when he became a cub reporter. It's a bank which has produced major luminaries - two central bank governors, two ministers and rival bankers.

As far as Tiger can recall, no other bank has produced even one central bank governor or one minister, so that's a huge credit to the bank. But it was not without blemish. Allow Tiger some indulgence and let him recount some interesting history.

It was a Chinese Malaysian businessman Khoo Teck Puat who founded Malayan Banking back in 1960. Tiger was eight then but he knows because he read up. Khoo left the OCBC group, strong Singapore-based bankers, because he thought they were not moving fast enough in Malaysia, then Malaya, newly independent from Britain in 1957.

The idea was to take banking to the rural areas and to liberate Malaysia from the stranglehold of foreign British banks. Malayan Banking did this admirably, becoming the largest bank in terms of branches by 1966.

And then trouble started.

Go to KiniBiz for more.

The article was written by P Gunasegaram.