Wednesday 22 February 2012

Prelude to FGV Listing

A few days ago, we heard that the highly anticipated EGM of Koperasi Permodalan FELDA Malaysia Bhd (KPF)’s was  cancelled. The EGM of  the 224,000-strong cooperative was called off following the Kuantan High Court’s temporary injunction blocking the transfer of shares from the cash-rich cooperative to FELDA Global Ventures Holdings Bhd. FELDA Global is on its way to a listing on Bursa Malaysia, expected to be as early as May. After the listing, it would create a RM 21 billion corporate behemoth. That was how Ahmad Maslan described it.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had been scheduled to attend the event. Last week, eight settlers who are members of the KPF filed an application at the same court for an injunction to block the share transfer from KPF to FELDA Global or for discussing it at the EGM.
If the injunction was granted at that time and efforts toward securing the injunction had in fact begun as early as January 2012, my question is what were UMNO lawyers doing? Especially that chap who got the RM 2.2 billion highway contract? Perhaps he was too busy imagining counting the millions he will personally get and millions more he and his buddies will have to allocate to hidden hands, to care about what’s happening to FELDA GV. 
Indeed, the injunction was the third application KPF. The National FELDA Settlers Children’s Association (Anak) had filed a similar action twice, one to prevent KPF from holding its EGM end of last year, and the other today. Today means 2 days away from the EGM. UMNO lawyers must be sleeping.
This is an embarrassment to Najib. His lawyers cannot preempt the injunction. Heads must roll. The first person he must sack following this fiasco should be Isa Samad himself. Perhaps Isa is too busy playing the resident politician at FELDA HQ at Jalan Semarak where he dispenses his homegrown wisdom laced with the usual sardonic phrases and of course, cash belonging to FELDA.
The next person Najib should sack head of the legal team representing FELDA and UMNO in this injunction application. Better, he should terminate the 2.2 billion highway contract. If UMNO lawyers cannot even circumvent the injunction by 4 ordinary people, how can they look after the construction of the highway? You want this kind of lawyers to look after UMNO. They are only good at executing disciplinary measures on dissenting members.
Beyond that what is at stake really? First and foremost, FELDA settlers through their KPF must pressure FELDA to stop allowing FGV to do a reverse takeover. its clearly a case of a smaller, loss making business entity, managed by incompetent people, planning to take over FELDA Holdings. Why should losers and incompetents take over FELDA Holdings?  FELDA Holdings should take over FGV or better still, sell off FGV. See whether there are takers for FGV?Isnt that called wide asset unbundling?
The objective of the injunction was to prevent KPF from disposing of all or part of its equity in FELDA Holdings Bhd to FELDA Global. You may remember that KPF owns 51 per cent of FELDA Holdings while the remaining 49 per cent is owned by FELDA Global. Among the grounds for the application was that the KPF’s proposal to dispose of its equity in FELDA Holdings and other subsidiaries, worth RM3.13 billion, to FELDA Global would not benefit them or KPF shareholders.



12 comments:

  1. Isn't the fight against listing akin to protecting the biggest productive Malay landbank from the possibility of a takeover.?Jati n Perkasa shld support this initiative if they are true to their words.
    Once listed its open season and nobody can stop the shares from falling to non Bumi interest.And a short term gain will be a sacrifice of long term value creation.
    Its so damn simple yet Najib can't see it.What does he see?

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  2. Salam Datuk,
    Saya bagi reference rencana datuk kat blog saya rencana @
    http://warongpakyeh.blogspot.com/2012/02/transformasi-najip-dari-lintah-kapada.html

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  3. Salam Dato'

    Why cannot we see "why this single mindedness if not of vested interests and which cannot be for the good of the people, surely."?

    Why cannot we see the hidden objectives and agenda?

    Why can we not see that they want our votes and they will use us to succeed with their plans?

    We can start seeing when we can find to say NO to all they want us to say is good for us.

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  4. Dato,

    Some major factual errors.

    An interim injunction usually is granted ex parte where only the applicant's lawyers are present in absence of the respondents lawyers. Most times it is done in secret. To accuse KPF's lawyers of failing to defend the petition, is very naughty of you. You are not telling the full truth and you have decided to spin the story.

    Secondly, KPF has their own board and it is them who can appoint the lawyers. Not FELDA, FELDA Holdings, FGV and for that matter UMNO. Again you are spinning. Please do state the truth.

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  5. Could it be a coincidence that FGV listing and the dismantling of MAS into various smaller entities being rushed to complete by May 2012? Have to be done before GE13 in case UMNO/BN loses power?

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  6. Dato,since this article is about Felda and the Malays and bumiputras participation in the plantation industry,let us refresh some memories.First like Dr Mahathir like to say,Malays tend to have poor memories.

    So let us refresh some memories and also to let first time eligible voters who were not born yet to have some ideas of what happened then and what is going to happen soon.

    Remember the Guthries Plantation takeover.Under Dr M's plan to get Malays involved in big business and high level management and his Malays millionaires list,PNB sent operatives to London where Guthries stock was also traded.When trading open they went in and heavily bought Guthries shares,so that they own over the limit level for a takeover offer.

    That sent the orang putih with their funds scrambling over to Indonesia.But luckily Malaysia had agriculture college Pertanian.Or else we will have no seedlings to plant anything.

    So back then we were in a haste to have almost everything,from manufacturing to agriculture under Malay total control or joint ventures.This created what is now popularly known as cronism,and created many crony billionaires and multi millionaires.

    Now we are in a haste to have Felda a one hundred percent bumiputra ownership controlled co-operative listed to be publicly traded for any Tom,Dick and Julie to buy.Of course some of the institutions who will be subscribing or buying the shares when it is finally listed will be the orang putihs.

    Why then we were so happy to chased them off now we have our hands wide open to happily welcome them back.So what is going to happen when the settlers slowly start to sell their shares in small lot by lot.Eventually many of the settlers are going to end up with no shares at all.And many of the settlers are not that well educated.So if one day they have to leave the settlement,where will they go.

    So is the listing for the benefits of the settlers to be happy for striking an empat ekor or for the few big fishs' to strike the first prize in the lotto.

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  7. Dato,is the proposed listing of FGV a prelude to milking the last of the "virgin cash cows" before the fat lady sings.

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  8. DS Najib and his cohorts always promised in their political ceramahs that Malay interests will always be protected by BN.

    SO how come the FGV listing goes against the promise made by DS Najib?

    And the beautiful part is that the Malays in general are not bothered at all by this daylight robbery of Malay land ! (From the looks of it it looks like the malays are 'OK' if they are robbed by their own kind -an example is the MAS out-of-court settlement with Tajuddin)

    We wonder what cerita the BN gomen will cook up as an excuse when the Malay equity did not reach the 30% target?

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  9. The art of slavery,courtesy of UMNO.

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  10. most umno leaders have no visions. actually the're pirates!

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  11. Aiyah Datuk, let them do what they want to do lah. It is only a court injunction what? Can be set aside, and will be set aside. So many precedents what? Small problem only lah. And by this granting of the injunction, doesn't this show that our courts are impartial? The BIG BOSS says listing is good for Felda settlers. We just have to listen loh. Father knows best what?

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  12. Sdr. Sakmongkol,

    I presumed that you have read my e-mail. Like I said before, I do not agree with the listing because I cannot reconcile (probably because I am not highly educated) a lot of things.

    Sekian.
    TzarCzar

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