51% equity rule – the making of more Malay fat cats?

[superadmin]

You must have been following the ongoing excitement about the government ruling that requires non-Bumiputera freight forwarding companies to sell 51% of their equity to Bumiputeras.

My own reaction was “Oh wow, haven’t heard of such things for a while”. I guess unremitting disasters (viruses, incompetent governments, economic stress) have been occupying my mind a lot lately.

But this is Malaysia, and Covid or no Covid, nothing much has changed. Seems like our regular Malaysia Boleh service is resuming as things are beginning to look up a bit.

I have a question though – how will this help the Malays? Seriously, do you think anybody in KL cares about our Bumiputera brothers and sisters across the South China Sea?

If the companies are nationalised instead and the shareholdings turned into unit trusts and distributed to all Bumiputeras (here give a bit of face lah to the East Malaysians and the odd Eurasians), then it may be of some help.

Everybody gains here, or rather, none will lose too badly.

Or sell the shares to government-linked companies. But our GLCs have their own issues trying to navigate the treacherous business environment caused by the pandemic, and also figuring out who their next chairman will be, given the horse-trading among their political masters.

Anyway, how likely would such GLCs outperform the current non-GLC businesses? Good question isn’t it?


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