High-stakes battle for vehicle concessions
Lobbying is afoot with tech upstarts hunting for a golden goose.
Keong Hee Huat Chai, everyone. That’s the Hokkien version for the popular Chinese New Year greeting, according to my mother-in-law and I’d be foolish to contest that.
Today’s newsletter is a subscriber-only post on two of the government’s auto-related concessions. I’d like to take this opportunity to plug that the Pardon Me discount is still running until tomorrow so you can still get a discount on annual subscriptions here:
I also have a premium tier called Founding Member where subscribers get all the perks of an annual subscription and more, such as an annual report and breakdown of how The Malaysianist fared throughout the year and some insights learned along the way.
Everyone wants a piece of an auto-related government concession. Incumbents want to hold on to it. One family-run consortium is suing for it. Tech upstarts are lobbying for it. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) is investigating one of them.
Two deals are on the table. Both multi-million ringgit. Both promising steady cash flows. We’ll start with the government fleet concession. The concession holder is Spanco Sdn Bhd, which is also being investigated by the MACC.
Owned by tycoon Robert Tan Hua Choon, Spanco bagged the concession to lease and maintain government vehicles in 1993. The concession was for 25 years. On average, Spanco was able to net RM400 million in revenue and RM30 million in after-tax profits every year.