The CEO of Malaysia’s $72 Billion State Fund Is Leaving

(Bloomberg) -- Malaysia’s biggest state-owned fund Permodalan Nasional Bhd.’s Chief Executive Officer Abdul Rahman Ahmad will be leaving, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

Rahman will be replaced by Jalil Rasheed, Singapore investment director at Invesco Ltd., said the person, who asked not to be identified as the information is private. Rahman joined PNB in 2016 after a stint as CEO of Ekuiti Nasional Bhd., a state-linked private equity firm.

The moves signal that Malaysia isn’t done with a leadership reshuffle at government-linked companies, which started with the departures of former PNB chairman Abdul Wahid Omar as well as executives at CIMB Group Holdings Bhd. and Khazanah Nasional Bhd. The management changes followed the return of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who led the current government to a surprise victory in the May 2018 election.

A representative for PNB didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment, while Jalil couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

PNB was set up by the government in 1978 to help boost the wealth of the country’s ethnic Malays by investing in local companies. The fund has total assets of 301.4 billion ringgit ($72 billion) as of end-May, with Rahman and Wahid unveiling plans in 2016 to boost the assets to 350 billion ringgit by 2022.

The fund holds stakes in the nation’s biggest companies, including Malayan Banking Bhd., Sime Darby Bhd. and UMW Holdings Bhd. Its domestic equity investments of 180 billion ringgit is equivalent to about 10% of the Malaysian stock exchange’s market capitalization, Wahid said in a 2017 interview.

To contact the reporter on this story: Elffie Chew in Kuala Lumpur at echew16@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Fion Li at fli59@bloomberg.net, Yudith Ho, Anuradha Raghu

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.