This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on August 28, 2019
KUALA LUMPUR: Jalil Rasheed, the investment director for the Singapore office of UK-based fund manager Invesco Ltd, is set to assume the group chief executive seat at Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB), the largest fund manager in Malaysia.
Sources told The Edge Financial Daily the 38-year-old, who was formerly chief executive officer (CEO) of Aberdeen Islamic Asset Management, will take over from the current PNB CEO, Datuk Abdul Rahman Ahmad, when the latter’s contract expires end-September.
This will make Jalil the second new CEO at PNB in three years, after the position was held for almost two decades by Abdul Rahman’s predecessor.
Prior to joining Invesco in April 2013, Jalil was with Aberdeen for about a decade. He was based in London between 2003 and 2005 as part of its emerging markets team, before spending two years up to 2007 in Singapore with its Asean equities team. He left Aberdeen in 2013 after nearly three years as CEO of Aberdeen Islamic Asset Management, based in Kuala Lumpur.
Meanwhile, it is learnt that Abdul Rahman, who assumed the post at PNB on Oct 1, 2016 — just two months after PNB appointed Tan Sri Abdul Wahid Omar in August 2016 as chairman — is heading to Sime Darby Bhd, where PNB holds a 51.1% stake, as chairman soon.
The departure of Abdul Rahman may precede more changes at the top of PNB.
Market talk has it that its chief financial officer Datuk Mohd Nizam Zainordin is weighing retirement, while chief strategy officer Datin Paduka Kartini Abdul Manaf’s contract is currently on a six-month extension up to the end of this year following the expiry of her contract in June this year.
PNB has about RM301.4 billion in assets under management as at May 2019. It reports to Yayasan Pelaburan Bumiputra, whose board of trustees is chaired by Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Abdul Wahid and Abdul Rahman drew up PNB’s six-year transformation plan called STRIVE-15, which began in 2017.
The plan aims to uplift PNB into becoming a world-class investment house by whipping investee companies into better shape and boosting returns for its 14.1 million unitholders nationwide.
But Abdul Wahid left PNB in end-June 2018, about two months after the 14th general election last year. Following his departure, ex-central bank governor Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz was appointed to helm PNB’s board as chairman.
Zeti told The Edge Malaysia Weekly in a March 2019 interview that among her immediate focuses will be to review the progress of STRIVE-15, which will run until 2022.
“It’s a good time to review it because it is at the mid-point. Secondly, the environment has changed significantly in terms of digitalisation, in terms of the uncertainty in the world now,” Zeti said then.