KAJANG, 6 Mar: Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim takes his position as the Chief Minister of Selangor as an opportunity to continue the legacy of his fight to accumulate assets for the people.
He said that the legacy includes the latest achievement of signing the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which returns the Selangor water industry to the people of Selangor.
“I have experience in acquiring assets for the benefit of the people. I did it against Guthrie in London. I also took over the estate assets in Indonesia bought by Guthrie.
“Now I am buying water assets, which if owned by the people, would be better for the people of Selangor.
“This means that my legacy is to obtain property for the interests of the people. The property is ultimately not for me, but for the people.
“Like when I bought the palm oil plantation in Indonesia in 2000, people said I was throwing away money, but now when we have bought a lot, we are printing money.
“(But) I did not get the money,” he said at a press conference during the Joint Management Body and Management Corporation recently.
Before Abdul Khalid ventured into politics, he was a corporate leader who has extraordinary skills in the intricacies of the corporate world.
Among the most memorable internationally was when he was able to restore the largest plantation company, Guthrie, from British hands into the lap of Malaysia in 1981.
In a mission known as the ‘Dawn Raid’ in the city of London, Abdul Khalid was tasked to plan a strategy to take over the plantation company via a ‘surprise attack’ in the London Stock Exchange.
In 2000, Abdul Khalid, in his capacity as the Chief Executive Officer of Guthrie, he managed to take over the oil palm plantations company in Indonesia through a stock purchase tender worth US$350 million.
His legacy continued with the success of eliminating Alam Flora as the single garbage collection contractor and handing over the solid waste management to local authorities, thus saving up to RM80 million of the people’s money a year.
He was also responsible for collecting back debt of RM392 million form Talam Corporation Berhad (Talam) which was failed to be collected by Barisan Nasional (BN) previously.