Abu Sahid – the man with a PLUS appetite

TAN Sri Abu Sahid Mohamed ( pix), group executive chairman of Maju Holdings Sdn Bhd, is either all in or all out.

He will bang tables and make impassioned speeches but, make no mistake, he is as shrewd and as proud as they come.

Case in point is his Perwaja steel venture, which started in 1996.

He may not have wanted it, but once he was committed. He was all in. Abu Sahid, 65, worked at it for 12 years to a point where the company was making profits again. Talk then started that he was cooking the books, and he was told to prove his numbers. It was then that he decided to go for a listing. Once again though, Abu Sahid was told listing on his own was not good enough, he needed to bring in a strategic partner. “They said a strategic industry cannot be owned by one character, one behaviour. Should anything go wrong what will happen? Just like now, you all keep asking what if I fail ...” Abu Sahid grumbled. To cut a long story short, the entry of Tan Sri Pheng Yin Hwa’s Kinsteel Sdn Bhd led to a listing on Abu Sahid’s “birthday 20082008” (Aug 20, 2008). Not long after, however, he resigned from the company. He was all out. “They didn’t want to listen to me, didn’t want to follow me, so I resigned. But till today I have not sold down my RM700 million investment in the company,” Abu Sahid said.

When asked why not, he said it was a matter of honour.

“I made a promise that I would not sell. A promise is a promise. You have to keep your promises, otherwise people will spit on your grave, your children’s grave,” he said in explaining how he ended up with a 60.2% stake in a company which posted losses of RM387.3 million for the financial year ended June 30, 2016.

Abu Sahid does not blame Pheng’s management for the decline of Perwaja though. He insists that the industry is one that needs government support, and Perwaja suffered from the lack of it.

“We are paying more for gas than Singapore! You want to protect local industry and workers. The government didn’t bail us out,” he said.

As one of his advisers pointed out, Abu Sahid was winding down last year, and he even stopped entertaining guests at his home.

Maju’s pursuit of PLUS, however, has re-energised Abu Sahid. He’s all in.