At long last, the sources story became a reality. The news portal and mainstream newspapers must have received the news from an extremely reliable source. Perhaps from the players directly. So the AirAsia/MAS share swap has been sealed at long last. At whose interests? MAS or AirAsia?
Strictly speaking, a share swap is about financial considerations i.e. about money. But this is not a simple share swap, there was an immediate changes of the top management of MAS. MAS’s managing director, YM Tengku Datuk Seri Azmil Zahruddin, had to tender his immediate resignation. There was an immediate appointment of Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, the executive chairman of Tune Group and chief executive director of AirAsia, and Datuk Kamarudin Meranum, the deputy chief executive director of AirAsia, to the board of directors of MAS. Khazanah should have gone another step further to make this share swap complete by appointing Tan Sri Tony Fernandes as the MAS’s new managing director which appointment will make MAS moves into a new golden era.
The so-called negotiations were done in a hush-hush manner only to be leaked out on 6-8-2011 through an AirAsia very friendly news portal, The Malaysian Insider, quoting industry sources with clinical accuracy, in HERE. I must say that it was well thought out “sources” story where MAS was made out to be in the brink of collapsing.The ways in which the share swap was finalised with utmost secrecy was as though without AirAsia’s immediate “HELP” MAS would have collapsed in a matter of days!
Before the ink of the signature of Tan Sri Tony Fernandes dried up, we already saw 2 AirAsia directors in the MAS’s board of directors and Firefly, community airline, will cease flying its current local routes, which is in competition with AirAsia.
Presumably when the delivery of the ordered 200 airbus begins early next year, MAS will have to be a good samaritan to take over the airbus and will be used on MAS existing destinations.
The aftermath of this so-called share swap will be very interesting to see. Malaysians must congratulate Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, a good samaritan, and those behind this deal for helping out MAS, our national airline, to fly to a majestic height.
Presumably Malaysians will see the tremendous increase of the share prices of AirAsia and MAS to a phenomenal level as a result of this share swap that was shrouded with such secrecy. Malaysia is definitely a BOLEH Land!
