The Breakfast Grille

The formation of alliances by the world's largest shipping companies is a reflection of the state of shipping capacity oversupply. While Westports loses volume coming from 2M, it will be a net gainer from the O3 or Ocean Three alliance. We also discuss Malaysia's strategic location as a transshipment hub. Moving forward Westports doesn't believe that size is everything and there is no need to achi...

Brahmal Vasudevan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the private equity (PE) fund Creador, discusses his India PE experience, the pull of ASEAN, association with Ananda Krishnan, Creador's investors, promised returns, performance, fundraising and competition. He also talks about his investing style, the broader PE industry and investments like CTOS. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy inf...

On the 8th of December last year, an open letter was sent by a group of 25 prominent Malay personalities, calling on “moderate Malays, Muslims and Malaysians” to speak out against “extremist, immoderate and intolerant voices”. The 25 signatories include retired senior civil servants such as former Secretary-Generals, Director-Generals, and ambassadors. Melisa Idris speaks t...

Mykris Ltd Group's executive chairman and CEO, Chew Choo Soon comes on the Breakfast Grille to talk about the future of the company's managed internet services. Listed in New Zealand, Mykris already has a large portfolio of large corporate users and hotel operators, among others. It aims to be a provider of a Wireless Last mile for businesses, and for financial year 2014 revenue came in at NZ$7.3...

Dato' Richard Curtis says that Cahya Mata Sarawak is a follower of state and federal policy but we try to find clues of where CMS leads and influence policy that adds to state vibrancy. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Richard Tan Ling Geck, Co-Founder & Managing Director, Interbase Resources, which owns Lelong.com.my & Superbuy amongst other Internet properties, talks about his ecommerce journey, sale of Autoworld, 'DotCom 3.0', Seek's purchase of Jobstreet, Lelong vis-a-vis competition from Rocket Internet and Rakuten, its expansion with Superbuy, listing possibilities, profitability and possible trade...

Jeff Kong, executive director for Nirvana Asia Ltd comes on the Breakfast Grille to talk about the end of life business. Nirvana, which was known as NV Multi when it was listed in Malaysia, is best known as an integrated bereavement services provider. It completed its listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange in December 2014 and now has its eyes firmly on its future expansion plans. We ask Jeff abo...

Paul Gibbons, managing director of Sports Direct Malaysia comes on the Breakfast Grille to talk about the sporting retail business. Sports Direct Malaysia, is actually a partnership between local golf retailer MST and UK's largest sports retailer SportsDirect.com. Built on the concept of big box stores, Sports Direct just set up its 11th outlet in Intermark with an aim to open another 25 over the...

Francois Nunez, product director for Victorinox AG comes on the Breakfast Grille to talk about the company's foray into the watch business. Victorinox, is best known for its utility knives, bearing the highly recognisable cross on shield motif. The company is the largest manufacturer of pocket knives in the world, but has recently branched out to the likes of luggage, clothing and watches. We ask...

Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam, the Director of The Asian Strategic and Leadership Institute (ASLI) and Chairman of the Centre for Public Policy Studies (CPPS), discusses the funding, integrity, efficacy and independence of Malaysian think tanks. He also talks about the background behind the 2006 resignation of one of its directors, Dr Lim Teck Ghee, whose research asserted that Bumi corporate equity st...

In this 2015 interview, Dato? Wei Chuan Beng, Group Managing Director, REDtone International Bhd, discussed the surge in interest in his listed shares, the role and increasing presences of Tan Sri Vincent Tan, the Sultan of Johor and Chairman Dato Sri Al-Habshee, the growth of his data and managed services segments. He also talks about possible new interest in Digital Terrestrial TV Broadcastng (D...

Aspen Group is a young, ambitious company which will spearhead the Bandar Cassia development in Batu Kawan worth RM8b in GDV. The company wants to make a name in affordable housing. They address this by using Batu Kawan to meld new land with proximity to employment centres. A transportation blueprint is key for this purpose but that seems to be lacking in Batu Kawan at this point. The spotlight wo...

On his second visit to strengthen relations between our two countries with a focus on education, trade and Islamic finance, Britain's Minister for Asia also had to engage with his counterpart on less than comfortable issues of concern like the jailing of Federal opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, the Sedition Act and general questions of human rights.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy in...

Dr Mahender Singh, CEO of Malaysia Institute for Supply Chain Innovation or MISI comes on the Breakfast Grille to talk about its mission to develop and disseminate innovation in the realm of the supply chain and logistics. However, the global situation never remains static, so we ask him about the changing face of the supply chain, how factors like e-commerce and 3D printing changes things and wha...

“Some of the statements in the book would also make uncomfortable reading both for those in power and in the political opposition,” says one reviewer. Now a bestseller, Muhammad’s book takes on many common perceptions about the question of inequality and related policies like the New Economic Policy. But the real strength and contribution of the book is in the new research as wel...

Axis REIT believes that their status as a syariah compliant investment does not restrict their economic potential. Sukuk funding costs are comparable to conventional funding and readily available. Compliant assets are in abundance. In the scheme of things, this will be reflected in long term DPU (dividend per unit) growth which had been for 2014 lower than the likes of KLCC Stapled Reit, IGB Reit...

After the mapping of the human DNA by the Human Genome Project, MGRC saw the need to fill what they believed was going to be a huge market in analytics. Even the government has high hopes in this area with a target of 15% contribution to GDP coming from the Bioeconomy. 40 patents and a few loss-bleeding years later, MGRC is beginning to see signs of profitability. The need to achieve greater inves...

Malaysians usually have a jaded reaction when it comes to big policies from the government: think Proton, Vision 2020, NEP, 1Malaysia etc. The intentions of the Bioeconomy Transformation Programme in raising employment and spurring growth are good but it should be another one of those areas receiving high scrutiny, not least due to the huge incentives given to the sector. We catch up with Dato Dr...

Joining us from Digi on the Breakfast Grille are its CEO Lars-Ake Norling and COO Albern Murty, who will take over the mantle of CEO from April 1. Digi is the third largest telco in the country with net profit for 2014 coming in at RM2 billion on the back of RM7 billion in revenue. However, Lars was appointed CEO just in August, hence his departure just six months later has raised eyebrows. Albern...

Jakob Angele, head of business development for food delivery service, Foodpanda comes on the Breakfast Grille to talk about its latest acquisition trail. Foodpanda states its ambitions as being the main food delivery platform, giving established names an additional delivery channel while giving a presence to those without a website. Most recently it announced the acquisition of competitor Room Ser...

We discuss whether things like social safety nets, minimum wages, affirmative action policies and even protectionism are at odds with the quest for competitiveness. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Piti Pramotedham, Executive Chairman and CEO of Kronologi Asia comes on the Breakfast Grille to talk about the growth prospects for the company following its listing on the ACE market last year. Kronologi, which had its start in Singapore, is in the business of providing enterprise data management (EDM) solutions, offering customers backup, storage, and recovery services for digital data. He talks...

CTOS provides data for assessing one's credit standing. On the one hand, this raises discomfort about privacy and freedoms. But on the other, information about credit quality protects the financial and banking system. It also speeds up the application process for financial products. Yet another concern is whether monopolistic tendencies and a dominant credit report agency would open other cans of...

His Excellency Dr Makio Miyagawa, ambassador of Japan to Malaysia comes on the Breakfast Grille to talk about building on the already steady relationship between the two countries. He also talks about how to grow trade between Malaysia and Japan, how Abenomics has been the game changer for many, and Japan's ambitious 20 million tourist target leading up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. He also discusse...

Undeterred by the repercussions of the oil price crash, Prinsiptek is soldiering on further into construction and property development. Having survived a major rights issue and share cancellation exercise with a price crash, investors will now ask the question of how the company will position itself against the big players who have the economic clout even in Prinsiptek's niches like affordable hou...