Tun M Not Only Saved YTL From Bankruptcy But He Also Helped Turn Them Into A Billion-Dollar Company

After a series of postings hinting at hidden hands behind former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s plot to topple Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK) has decided to name the mysterious Chinese tycoon in his earlier postings as YTL Managing Director, Tan Sri Francis Yeoh.

In his recent posting on 21 December, RPK laid the blame for the catastrophic nationwide blackout in 1992 squarely at the feet of the YTL Director and Tun M.

“Francis Yeoh and Dr Mahathir had already plotted to create this cash cow called IPPs long before the 1992 nationwide blackout. But they needed a trigger to justify the IPPs. So they sabotaged the TNB power station in Paka, which would result in a nationwide blackout.

“Singapore had already noticed that there was something wrong in Paka and they contacted the TNB headquarters to inform them about it. TNB then brought this matter to the attention of the ‘higher-ups’ but they were told to ignore it.

“Then what was expected to happen did happen. Paka ran into problems and Malaysia suffered a nationwide blackout. And then the government announced that since TNB was not capable of managing things they were going to privatise the generation of electricity through IPPs.

“Singapore was convinced that the nationwide blackout was not an accident or bad management on the part of TNB but was intentional — hence Paka was sabotaged. That was also what the TNB engineers and station managers told me, which was why they were very sore about the creation of IPPs,” RPK revealed.

The blogger also chose to debunk many of the claims made by the eldest son of Malaysian billionaire Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Yeoh Tiong Lay in his widely reported and controversial interview in June 2014 when he famously declared that ‘crony capitalism in Malaysia has to go’.

“Francis Yeoh also says he is not Dr Mahathir’s crony and that he made his money not through cronyism but through innovation. The truth is, YTL was on the verge of bankruptcy in the mid-1980s and it was Dr Mahathir who bailed them out. In fact, Dr Mahathir not only saved YTL from bankruptcy but he also helped turn them into a billion-dollar company,” RPK pointed out.

However, it appears the company is still able to take advantage of its profitable relationship with the federal government without Tun M in power.

The company was in the limelight earlier this year when the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) revealed in a report that there was a conflict of interest in awarding the project to construct the express rail link (ERL) extension from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) to a contractor who is also a major shareholder of the company that operates the train service.

“It renders it difficult for the government to get value for money (for the project).

“Apart from that it can create a conflict of interest between the shareholders and conflict of interest in the contract negotiations,” the report said.

Source : Malaysia Today

The “story” behind Tun Mahathir and YTL Power’s IPP Deal

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed rants about the Najib administration need to be seen against the backdrop of his “chequered” history as prime minister from 1991 to 2003 when the rules of the game that he talks about did not appear to apply to him.

He now talks about dealings involving the government which he claims are not above board when he liberally indulged in them during his 22 year tenure as head of government.

Take the case of Independent Power Producers (IPPs) being given preferential treatment by the former leader to the detriment off the government and the people of Malaysia.

Specifically, one needs to look at the case of YTL Power Generation Sdn Bhd while owner Tan Sri Francis Yeoh was known to be very close to Dr Mahathir which receive a sweetheart deal.

According to the late Tan Sri Ani Arope, TNB at that point was producing electricity at 8 sen a unit (kWh) and this could be delivered at 17 sen per unit.

But the IPPs were producing electricity at 23 sen per unit with TNB needing to charge consumers no less than 30 sen per unit.

To see how much money IPPs made in 2010, YTL Power Generation Sdn Bhd reportedly raked in a profit of more than RM 1.6 billion On revenues of RM13 billion that year. (YTL Power’s power purchase agreement with the government comes to an end this September 30 with no talk of any extension to date)
Ani, in his Memoirs of Tan Sri Ani Arope, talks about how the Mahathir administration railroad the idea of IPP with Tenaga Nasional Berhad of which the late agronomist was executive chairman to such an extent that the national power authority was forced to accept everything the Economic Planning Unit under the Prime Minister’s Department dictated.

Ani’s senior officers balked at the top down treatment which seemed to them to be unfairly one-sided in favour of the IPPs, the book states.

The former Rubber Research Institute (RRI) head refused to accede to the demands of EPU and was unceremoniously shown the door.

No one in government wanted to touch him with a ten foot pole after that given the wide expanse of Mahathir’s influence . He was, by his own admission, forced to work with foreign interests who gave his talent and experience due regard.

Kinibiz’s P. Gunasegaram, in a story last year, related how the first-generation IPP was an exceedingly lucrative deal for YTL Power, with the pricing of power based on at least an internal rate of return of at least 16%.
Eventually, it reportedly turned out to be 14%, said to be the highest amongst all IPPS.
“If the project is structured such that equity is 20% and the rest 80% financed by debt and if we assume an interest rate of say 7.5% (it’s much lower now), then calculations show that the return on equity is at least 50%. In two years, you recover your equity investment!”, he had said.

This was how Dr Mahathir dealt with the people’s money when he was the supreme decision-maker for a little more than two decades and everything was done his way.

He may deny this today and insist that he followed democratic principles and that everyone had his say in decision -making under his administration. But the truth of the matter is that no one dared to oppose Dr Mahathir when he was at the helm.

The closing irony in the YTL Power’s saga is that Yeoh made a spectacle of himself in a tirade against cronyism at Pemandu’s Global Malaysia Series Forum at the Securities Commission last year where he was in actual fact the classic crony during Dr Mahathir’s time.

For the record, his outburst came on the heels of his failure to obtain the contract for Track 3B of the new 2,000 MW IPP in Jlmah, Negeri Sembilan.

And that says it all about YTL Power and Yeoh.

Source : Facebook

Francis Yeoh denies he was Dr Mahathir’s crony

Tan Sri Francis Yeoh, managing director of YTL Corp Bhd, says he was not a crony of former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

He also said crony capitalism is a “misperception.”   

Yeoh said this in a letter to the media yesterday to clarify an article on an online portal on Tuesday titled “Crony capitalism in Malaysia has to go, son of YTL founder says”.

The article was written after Yeoh gave a talk on YTL and its family business on Tuesday. The talk was followed by a question-and-answer session.

“When asked if I was a ‘crony’ of [Dr Mahathir] who purportedly awarded us a lucrative independent power plant (IPP) concession, I categorically stated that I was not a crony of [Dr Mahathir]. In everything we did, we introduced innovative ideas to succeed — from unprecedented ringgit financing for infrastructure projects in developing countries to creating the first 15-year bond market and pioneering the IPC listing category in Bursa Malaysia,” Yeoh wrote in his letter to the media.

YTL, under the leadership of Yeoh, started Malaysia’s first IPP after it was given the privatisation award by Dr Mahathir. There was a public outcry when it was learnt that Tenaga Nasional Bhd had to buy power from this IPP at a rate seen as high.

But Yeoh said in his letter: “The title of this article is inaccurate and it does not reflect the content of what I actually said at the forum sponsored by Pemandu.”

He wrote: “I have always been enamoured of the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) led by our present Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, and transparently articulated through Mampu.”

Giving further clarifications, he said he was responding to an ongoing “misperception” among the audience at the forum that Malaysia practises crony capitalism.

He added: “I made it very clear that the achievements made were not a consequence of crony capitalism. I also wanted to dispel the audience’s misperception that successful businesses in Malaysia are a result of crony capitalism.”

Yeoh said throughout the audience interaction on Tuesday, he had defended the present government’s concerted efforts to introduce more open competition and encourage greater transparency in business.

He said the article’s title completely misrepresented what he had said.

“It automatically presupposes that “crony capitalism” is how things are done in Malaysia. This is far from the truth. In fact, I said I wanted to correct this misperception that has [been] used by various political factions for 20 years.”

Source : The Edge