This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on July 30, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: CIMB Group Holdings Bhd group chief executive officer Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Aziz said he has not been approached by the new government to take up the top job at sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Bhd, which saw members of its board of directors offering their resignations en masse last Thursday.

“My immediate goal is for CIMB to meet its targets set under the Target 2018 (T-18) initiative, which we are on track to achieve,” he told reporters on the sideline of The Economic and Leadership Forum 2018 on Saturday.

Last Thursday, all of Khazanah’s board members, including managing director Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar, offered to resign from the board, saying “to facilitate a smooth and orderly transition under the new government”.

Apart from Azman, Khazanah’s other directors are its executive committee chairman Tan Sri Md Nor Md Yusof, former banker Tan Sri Mohamed Azman Yahya, Datuk Mohammed Azlan Hashim, former central banker Tan Sri Andrew Sheng, former chairman and senior partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Malaysia Raja Tan Sri Arshad Raja Uda, CIMB chairman Datuk Seri Nazir Razak, Datuk Dr Nirmala Menon and banker Yeo Kar Peng.

Since August last year, Zafrul has been touted as one of the potential candidates to succeed Azman, who has been at the helm since 2004 and whose contract expires at end-May 2019.

With a realisable asset value of RM157.2 billion as at end-2017, Khazanah is a major shareholder of CIMB with a 27.3% stake.