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Building True Value: 12 Ideas Shaping Khazanah Inaugural Lecture by Tan Sri Dato’ Azman Hj. Mokhtar* Managing Director, Khazanah Nasional Berhad CEO Faculty Programme Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur 10 December 2015 * Views of the speaker are his personal reflections. Usual caveats apply. 1122 IIdeasdeas SShapinghaping KKhazanahhazanah BBook.inddook.indd 1 117/12/20157/12/2015 88:34:17:34:17 PPMM 1122 IIdeasdeas SShapinghaping KKhazanahhazanah BBook.inddook.indd 2 117/12/20157/12/2015 88:34:29:34:29 PPMM building true value : 12 ideas shaping khazanah SALUTATIONS Yang Berbahagia Tan Sri Abdul Halim Ali, Chairman, UTM Board of Directors, Yang Berbahagia Prof Datuk Ir. Wahid bin Omar, Vice-Chancellor of UTM, Yang Berusaha Prof Dr Rose Alinda Alias, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic & International) of UTM, Yang Berusaha Prof Dr Wan Khairuzzaman Wan Ismail, Dean of UTM International Business School, Staff and Students of UTM, My colleagues from Khazanah, Distinguished Audience, Ladies and Gentlemen, 1) Introduction a) Syukur Alhamdulillah, Jazakallah, my sincere thanks to Universiti Teknologi Malaysia for having me to deliver a fi rst lecture under the Ministry of Higher Education’s CEO@Faculty Programme. I’m truly grateful for being given this chance to share with you what I have on this subject, in my twelfth year as the CEO of Khazanah Nasional. I sincerely hope too that I will be able to share over the course of this lecture series, knowledge and ilmu that is useful. Mudah- mudahan, Insha’Allah. b) Khazanah, as you know, is the strategic investment fund of Malaysia, sometimes called the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Malaysia but a bit more on that later. Here, in Malaysia, I don’t have to explain too much what Khazanah means, but I have also found that Khazanah is not just a beautiful name and word found in the Holy Quran1; it means the same, that is “treasure” or “treasury” in no less than ten languages including Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, Urdu, Hindi, several African languages and of course, Bahasa Melayu. 1 Al-Qur’an, 12:55 1 1122 IIdeasdeas SShapinghaping KKhazanahhazanah BBook.inddook.indd 1 117/12/20157/12/2015 88:34:30:34:30 PPMM ceo faculty programme c) Perhaps at the start, I should share a question that I am often asked, which is ‘how many shareholders does Khazanah have?’ Th e fi rst answer, literally, says that there is of course only one. While this may well be true in that the Government of Malaysia, through the Ministry of Finance, owns 100% of Khazanah, it’s also not quite true as some would say Khazanah has 30 million shareholders, and that it belongs to 30 million people that are the citizens of Malaysia. Even then, some may say that that is not quite true as there are more than 30 million, that is all the many millions who are, Insha’Allah, not born yet; indeed this fund belongs to them too and with that, of course, there is an explicit and implicit responsibility to manage this for future generations. And then again, even that may not be quite true, in that Khazanah also belongs to those who are no longer with us, those that have toiled away endlessly since time immemorial, those who have sacrifi ced and indeed some who have given their lives, the large, small, medium, famous and humble, that helped to build this nation that we now enjoy and on whose shoulders we are able to stand. Indeed, Khazanah belongs to all of the above and we must remember at the outset – and I remind myself most of all – that we must not only remember them, but to honour them in the best possible way by continuing to be true and continuing to build value for them and the current and future generations. d) It is in this spirit of remembrance and nation-building that I hope we begin this lecture series entitled “Building True Value: 12 Ideas Shaping Khazanah”, and may we be rightly guided in this endeavour, Insha’Allah. Th e topic in itself has its roots in a speech, “Building True Value: 10 Ideas Shaping Khazanah,” that I delivered in 2013 at two investment conferences in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur. Th is was in response to a series of questions at that time, in my tenth year of the Khazanah and GLC Transformation Programme, as to what were the actual “secret recipes” or anecdotes and war stories on how value was being created at Khazanah. I was initially somewhat reluctant to talk too much about the so-called achievements of Khazanah, as I truly believed then – as I do now – that the journey of transformation of Khazanah is still ongoing (perhaps 2 1122 IIdeasdeas SShapinghaping KKhazanahhazanah BBook.inddook.indd 2 117/12/20157/12/2015 88:34:30:34:30 PPMM building true value : 12 ideas shaping khazanah never completing, more precisely), and our quest to not just “create value” was still ongoing, and it was premature to talk about creating value in the past tense, as if we are so arrogant or at least careless to think it as a certainty that value had defi nitely been created. e) Hence, the topic was carefully positioned to talk about not just “creating value” but to emphasise that our task at Khazanah is really to “Build True Value” and that we would steer the discussion to be in the present and not past tense, that is to say “shaping” rather than be oh so certain to say that Khazanah has been “shaped.” Th e simple question that I was posed as to how do you create value also forced me to think beyond just the programmes, the transactions and the deals, the people, the leaders and the characters and the war stories and the anecdotes that goes with all of that – they were and still are important, but I was looking for a way to synthesise all of this in as thoughtful a way as possible. To put it in another way, to ask how was value being created, in a manner that truly builds not just true (that is not just fi nancial, but also economic, not just economic but also strategic, and not just strategic but also of societal value) but sustainable value for the rightful shareholders and stakeholders of Khazanah, and to focus not just on the “what” and “when” and “who”, but more fundamentally the “why” and the “how.” Th e path I took to bring all this together was indeed to move into the thinking process, into the realm of thinking, into the realm of ideas. f) Considering that this strand of presentation was fi rst delivered to an audience of quite battle-hardened market participants who are usually more interested in specifi c trading strategies, price-earnings ratios and asset liability mixes and the like, this approach was not without its risks, but thankfully I believe the Ten Ideas speech made its rounds and got some traction – it is still in print and being read today. Two years hence, our work continues and my colleagues and I have added two more ideas (innovation and inclusion), being two areas that on which we have focused a lot over the last couple of years. 3 1122 IIdeasdeas SShapinghaping KKhazanahhazanah BBook.inddook.indd 3 117/12/20157/12/2015 88:34:30:34:30 PPMM ceo faculty programme g) Alhamdulillah, I am pleased and honoured to be given this chance to expand further and update the thinking, through this CEO Faculty series, in this realm of ‘ideas” with a distinguished audience of academics and students that I hope in this process, the speaker and supposed “teacher” is as much the student and learner, as indeed the old saying goes: pertanyaan itu kunci ilmu. I have had to ask a lot of existential questions on the meaning of existence for Khazanah and how we go about discharging our responsibilities and mandate to arrive at this point. So, thank you again for having me here and for the next few years. Th is must be some kind of karmic penance and will certainly force me to make up for a lot of missed classes during my school and college days! 2) Th e context: Khazanah Nasional Berhad a) However, fi rst, before I go into the twelve ideas, I would like to give some quick context into what Khazanah is. 4 1122 IIdeasdeas SShapinghaping KKhazanahhazanah BBook.inddook.indd 4 117/12/20157/12/2015 88:34:30:34:30 PPMM building true value : 12 ideas shaping khazanah I don’t have to explain too much to this audience but just to say that we are offi cially the Sovereign Investment Fund of Malaysia, we manage about RM145 billion, depending how we count, we have about 80 major companies including some of the most famous names in Malaysia and increasingly the region, in 14 sectors across 16 geographies (with fi ve overseas offi ces). As a holding company, Khazanah has only 451 staff, but the companies under our stable total more than 200,000 employees. Khazanah was formed in 1994 (that makes us a sweet 21 this year). Incorporated under the Companies Act 1965, by tradition, the Prime Minister of Malaysia chairs Khazanah’s board which currently consists of 11 individuals, with some of the most senior and distinguished ministers and professionals on the board. b) To further give the context to the ideas that I wanted to present this morning, I thought the best way is to try and explain our journey through three reports that I have brought with me, limited copies of which along with a few others are available outside.