Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 9 March 2015 issue)

Dear Kam,
That League Cup Final, wow! What do you think?
Shoot & Score

Last Sunday night, I was settling down to watch a football match and also absent-mindedly scrolling through the Internet. Sunday night is usually a quiet time for Malaysia and I wasn’t expecting to find anything of interest. Maybe somebody would post some pictures of kittens, if I was lucky. And then suddenly that pesky Sarawak Report released story after story about 1MDB. As you know, Sarawak Report is a website based in London run by the sister of the ex-British prime minister Gordon Brown. It’s often referred to as a “whistleblower” site, which means it isn’t just gossipy political opinion but it also isn’t fully resourced and therefore completely convincing investigative journalism. Although it doesn’t always have the journalistic rigour that I look for, it does release some amazing news stories, usually about Sarawak but increasingly about wider Malaysian issues and now, 1MDB in particular. As I say, I’m not always convinced by Sarawak Report’s journalism. In its latest salvo, it purports to have reams of private and very damning emails as evidence. It may or may not actually have the emails, we just don’t know. We will probably have to wait for larger news services to get involved (Sarawak Report purports that this recent work was done in conjunction with London’s Sunday Times, which also released a 1MDB story on the same day), or for some legal action to force the scrutiny of any alleged evidence. Having said that, with stories swirling around from the New York Times and the Sunday Times as well as work being done inside Malaysia, we might not have to wait that long for effects to be felt.

The most recent Sarawak Report stories concentrate on the role played by the colourful Penang-born businessman known as Jho Low. He may or may not have done what he is alleged to have done to 1MDB, but he’s a fascinating man nonetheless. I’ve been interested in Jho Low since 2009 when a US-based friend of mine sent me a small news story from New York about a mysterious young Malaysian who appeared to be immensely wealthy and was buying champagne for everyone at various nightclubs. The news story reported that amongst other extravagances, he had “bought Lindsay Lohan 23 bottles of Cristal at 1OAK when she was celebrating her 23rd birthday”. People wanted to know, who is this man? Educated at Harrow (Winston Churchill’s old school) and Wharton, he has since gone on to become a genuinely wealthy businessman with very public expensive tastes that he enjoys with his many famous friends. Although he was not a contestant on Paris Hilton’s TV show, Paris Hilton’s My New BFF, he would appear to have won the big prize anyway because news reports would suggest that he hangs out with Paris, like, ohmigosh, all the frickin’ time. Lucky man. I happen to know seriously major celebrities like Harith Iskandar (you might remember him from a TV commercial back in the 1990s. He played a petrol-pump attendant. No?), but I can tell you it’s just not the same.

Jho Low comes across to me as a somewhat clownish figure, but he is immensely wealthy, and maybe I’m just jealous of his success. He’s really, really rich, a billionaire they say, and he’s barely in his thirties. But what does he actually do? For some insight, I turned to the corporate video for his Hong Kong-based company, Jynwel Capital. I might be easily confused by stories of business machinations but I do understand something of the processes involved in making corporate videos. The video is really very plush. It is very well shot indeed with Jho Low in multiple locations including offices, a fashion shoot and a very swanky beachfront property in the Caribbean where he is seen making a phone call. It is so well shot that it could be a trailer for a feature film, say, Oliver Stone’s Wall Street 3? It does not have lines like “Greed is good” but it does have a voice-over incanting things like, “For Jynwel, dynamic quality, exciting value creation and loyal trust are the foundations, nothing slips beneath.” OK, but could you be more vague? The video highlights several ventures including hotels, mining and a lingerie company but its greatest strength is in its businessy-feelingness with beautiful helicopter shots of London, Hong Kong and the Middle East, lots of important discussions and handshakes. And what is the company ethos? As Jho Low says in the video, “Our approach is to fundamentally question how quality is created, how to enhance value, identify synergies, capitalise on efficiencies and maximise potential. Then we can enjoy bringing creativity and expertise to a deal and execute it in our own way.”

I’ve written and directed several business corporate videos in my time, although nothing nearly as beautiful and globe-trotting as the Jynwel one (unless you count driving a van around Subang). These scripts are usually written by people who neither know nor are particularly excited by business matters and so the script invariably becomes a blather of keywords used in endless rotation: synergy, efficiency, opportunity, dynamic, exciting, aspiration and (in my case) “From its headquarters in downtown Shah Alam”. I never used, nor was I ever asked to use, the word trust. It’s understood that at least a minimally required degree of trust is a given. You don’t say trust, you prove trust. The Jynwel corporate video abounds with the word, trust.

Dear Kam,
I’m looking for new business investment angles. What about tin?
Hard Knock Life

A thought struck me the other day — whatever happened to the Malaysian tin-mining industry? OK, so I’m a bit slow and tin mining disappeared a long time ago but once it was everything. In 1979, Malaysia produced 31% of world output and the industry employed 41,000 people. You don’t normally associate Malays with tin mining but being from Perak, my family was involved in the industry. I have this memory of flying to Ipoh back in 1983 and the Kinta Valley below was nothing but tin mines. It felt like they had always been here and they would always be here. Malaysia was tin mining and rubber. I was visiting Malaysia on holiday and I came back again in 1987. When I think back to 1987, I don’t really remember tin mining. I didn’t know at the time that the price of tin had collapsed in 1985. When I moved back to Malaysia permanently in 1991, tin was simply not a factor anymore. Tin mining in Malaysia already felt like ancient history and Ipoh was not the bustling place it had once been.

When I thought about the overnight demise of this once crucially important sector, I was suddenly astonished by Malaysia’s ability to overcome. Tin fundamentally shaped the history and landscape of Peninsular Malaysia, and yet when it disappeared, Malaysia managed to move on to different industries, and different industries again. Now oil prices are low and palm oil’s long-term future is debatable (Thailand alone is converting its rubber plantations to oil palm), but no matter what happens in the future, I think you’d be foolish to bet against the practicality, resourcefulness and ingenuity of Malaysians.

Reprinted with the kind permission of