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Monday, May 14, 2007

Maybank wake-up call

I have to thank Patrick TEOH for this wakeup call... I had been one of those who were indifferent to this. Maybe because I thought it didn't affect me. After all, I'm not a lawyer. And partly because I did not see the big picture until his post on this woke me up. I'm referring to the Maybank fiasco. To quote him:
Okay, for those of you who've been sleeping or been apathetic as usual or been abroad and out of Internet reach in Siberia here's a little background to what took place about a week ago.

Maybank, the country's biggest bank announced that for legal firms to do business with it the firms must have at least 3 Bumiputra partners. One of whom must own no less than 50% equity in the firm. Of course, when the announcement went public the shit hit the fan. As it should.

As he and many may have noted, this Maybank fiasco was on front page last week for 1-2 days. After that, it died down.

Patrick's post pointed out many glaring 'problem' our country faces today - from indifferent public and tactless politicians to short-sighted people who run companies and our country. How can we be 'ready' for globalisation when we're still in stone-age when it comes to 'business' and 'making money'? How can the top bank in our country come up with such ridiculous requirement? Are they trying to say that they do not have plans to do business with people outside of Malaysia? I'll be bl00dy worried if I'm a Maybank shareholder.

Our politicians' reaction is something to take note of as well. "Maybe their approach as not right but the matter should have been between the two parties only. This is not something that should have been brought to the Cabinet," one Minister was quoted as saying.

Taken from The Star Online
Errr... Hello?! Which two parties did he mean? And since when is discrimination a "two party" issue and a waste of Cabinet's time? Cabinet is here to serve the public and if we think it is a serious matter, the Cabinet should be spending more time on it and ensuring this does not happen again!

No company would want to get itself into a scandal and be in the front page for the wrong reasons. In the corporate world, such statements and business policy, like in the case of Maybank, only shows how shallow the people running the business are. I wonder how such policy could have been approved by the board of directors? Or could this have been the decision of a 'overly excited employee' similar to the "Deepavali" issue not too long ago? Either way, it does not give confidence to shareholders. It does not give Maybank a 'professional' image. If we truly want to be 'world class', it is time the board of directors be responsible for all this. They should provide a satisfactory reasons why this was allowed to happen in the company. Otherwise, they should follow the steps of other CEOs like:
Leak scandal costs HP's Dunn her chairman's job
"These leaks had the potential to affect not only the stock price of HP but also that of other publicly traded companies," she said. "Unfortunately, the investigation, which was conducted with third parties, included certain inappropriate techniques. These went beyond what we understood them to be, and I apologize that they were employed."

Bristol-Myers CEO Quits
"The recommendation to fire Dolan and Willard came after Bristol-Myers struck a deal with generic drugmaker Apotex to delay sales of a generic version of Plavix, Bristol-Myers' top-selling drug. The agreement is the subject of a federal criminal investigation."

As customers of Maybank, we should send out a clear message that we're not happy. Close our Maybank account! As shareholders, question the director about this in the next shareholders' meeting! But as Patrick also highlighted, all these are very inconvenient. Close my account and incur administration charges? Better to just "close one eye" to all this. Easier for us... Right?

That's probably why each time we take a step, it is one step backwards...

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