Bakke’s credentials

 

Who are we to argue if the PM says Mohd Bakke is right for the job at Sime Darby? He has the right experience and possibly temperament too for the job. He has plantation experience, corporate re structuring experience and experience managing large corporations. Yes sir, picture this- mohd bake hauling bags of over charged fertilizers and carrying the harvesting sickle to harvest fresh fruit bunches.

I am not going to take away anything from the man. Maybe he's good or bad- which needed time to prove or disprove. I wished all him all the best.

When was he part of the managing team of Felda Holdings? From 2004-2008? Well during that time if he led or was part of the  senior management team at Felda Holdings or Felda Ventures or whatever, -that was the time when Felda's cash reserves dropped from RM4.3 billion to whatever it is today. 

Today, perhaps it has no cash reserves although that diminutive deputy minister wak Maslan says, oh..It dropped by just over RM 2 billion. He then provided a breakdown in the application of the drawn down reserves. His explanation was hotly contested because most of the expenditures he cited should have come from opex or categorized as OPEX.

If that is so, then we can expect deeper troubles at Felda because people there are confused as to opex and opex and cash reserves.

Sure Bakke may have the experience indeed- part of the team that oversaw the reduction of Felda's cash reserves. Which team?

But the papers also cited that Bakke was part of the managing team at Bank Islam. Ahlan wa sahlan wa marhaban bikum ya sheikh!

Was Bakkee part of the team at Bank Islam that saw it made losses of RM457 million. This RM457,000,000 came about as a result of Bank Islam making bad loans totaling RM 774 million? During which time Bank Islam had an NPL portfolio of RM 2.2 billion- that's RM2,200,000,000. Let me amplify that: - 2,200,000,000

By consensus, this financial debacle was due partly to mismanagement and poor internal controls. But more probably it's due to years of regulatory apathy fuelled by the misconceived notion of an untouchable Bank Islam because it was a favourite child of the Malaysian government. It was the first and model Islamic bank in the country and region. Islam is a perfect cover to hide misdeeds. The reality was, Bank Islam had a reputation in the market for being the spoilt child of the Malaysian Ministry of Finance; and the perception of the bank was more of a Muslim financial fraternity or government development financial institution.

You know the perception that whatever is done inside Bank Islam must be sanctioned.

But perhaps, the Bank practised ..wa haram-mun kalau makan sorang, wa halal-lun kalau kongsi sama.