The PM's corporate czar enters a boardroom tussle
Chin switched sides, Farhash is gone, and Ishak just moved
In Malaysia, things can move pretty fast. Like yesterday, for example.
An hour after I published on Ishak Ismail — Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s old corporate ally — and his family emerging as the largest shareholder in NexG Bhd, the company that prints your passport and MyKad, we had a full-blown boardroom war on our hands.
The story has all the right ingredients: two corporate players with ties to the PM, a realignment of allegiances that nobody saw coming, and a director linked to one of the country’s most contentious migrant services contractors being pushed out in the process.
For a backgrounder, here’s yesterday’s newsletter 👇🏾
Since this is a topical newsletter, I’ll just cut right to the chase.
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The day began with NexG’s board announcing it had suspended the executive powers of its chairman and CEO, Abu Hanifah Noordin, to ostensibly protect the integrity of an ongoing review into how the company lost RM145.6 million on a portfolio of penny stock investments.
The board framed it as an administrative measure, but it was more than that.