Azmil out of MAS in share swap with AirAsia
(The Malaysian Insider) – MAS managing director Tengku Datuk Azmil Zaharudin lost his job today after the airline’s shareholders finalised a share swap with Asia’s largest low cost carrier, AirAsia.
The Malaysian Insider understands that an executive committee led by Tan Sri Md Nor Yusof will manage the state carrier while day-to-day operations will be handled by Khazanah Nasional Bhd executive director and MAS board member, Mohd Rashdan Mohd Yusof.
Azmil will join Khazanah as an executive director effective September 12, 2011.
Under the share swap, AirAsia’s main shareholder Tune Air Sdn Bhd will swap 10 per cent stake in the budget carrier for 20.25 per cent share of the ailing flag carrier in the agreement called a “Comprehensive Collaboration Framework”.
Before the share swap, Tune Air was the biggest shareholder in AirAsia with 26.28 per cent stake while Khazanah held a total of 69.33 per cent share of MAS.
The MAS board will also see some new faces, namely Land & General Bhd founder, Tan Sri Wan Azmi Wan Hamzah, former IJM chief executive Datuk Krishnan Tan, Astro chief executive Datuk Rohana Rozhan and David Lau from Shell Malaysia, who will act as independent non-executive directors.
Rashdan, popularly known as Danny, was part of the BinaFikir consultancy that engineered the wide asset unbundling (WAU) restructuring that made MAS a virtual airline in 2002. BinaFikir was then led by Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar, who is now managing director of Khazanah, the majority shareholder in MAS.
