‘FOCUS ON CONSOLIDATION’
Asset manager continues to engage with investee firms to achieve its objectives, says chairman
PERMODALAN Nasional Bhd’s (PNB) immediate focus is to continue its consolidating initiatives and emphasise engagements with investee companies to achieve desired objectives, says chairman Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz.
At this point, PNB would remain on the consolidation trajectory and bring the execution of the consolidation to realise the objective, she said.
“For example, some of the consolidation, rationalisation and de-mergers we have undertaken are to give greater focus to the entities involved. So they have greater clarity on what they are to deliver.
“But in the process, of course, executing the actual process would take time... to deliver results. We want to manage it well so that it can unlock value and generate higher performance that it is capable of delivering,” she said after the launch of the new Amanah Saham Nasional Bhd (ASNB) funds and the announcement of PNB’s year-todate (YTD) financial performance, here, yesterday.
Zeti said the consolidation period would not exclude any market-driven merger or de-merger exercise and those not precipitated by PNB. “We rely on our own strategic and core companies to recognise the comparative advantage they will achieve by entering into any merger or de-merger. We would let it be driven by the market process.”
PNB’s consolidated income increased 2.6 per cent to RM10.3 billion for its eight-month period, while asset under management rose 7.3 per cent to RM288.1 billion.
PNB chief executive officer Datuk Abdul Rahman Ahmad said after an active 2017, PNB would continuously focus on transformation of strategic companies’ performance with value creation initiatives.
The year 2017 saw significant corporate exercises being undertaken, including Sime Darby Bhd’s pure play creation (demerger of its plantation and property divisions as the newlisted entities), Chemical Co of Malaysia Bhd de-merger, UMW Group, as well as SP Setia Bhd and I&P Group Sdn Bhd merger and capitalisation.
Abdul Rahman also said PNB would continue to engage and be more involved with selected core companies.