Malaysia may, to a certain extent, be less vulnerable with the revival of major construction projects which in view of the country’s strained finances, have been shrunk to cut costs. The Singapore economy may undergo a “shallow, technical recession” in the third quarter.
TALK of recession has hit the region, and near home, Maybank Kim Eng Research is flagging that possibility for Singapore in the next quarter.
Export-reliant economies are hard hit by slowing growth and supply chain disruptions caused by the prolonged US-China trade and tech war.
There may be a ceasefire now in the fight between the US and China following talks between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 Summit in Osaka last Saturday.
Existing US tariffs on Chinese imports still remain; additional tariffs on the remaining US$300 bil worth of Chinese imports, as threatened, will not be imposed for now
However, the new timeline for truce remains elusive; the suspicion is that of a “creeping” imposition of tariffs, as “each truce is followed by new tariffs and then, another truce.”
In December last year, Trump and Xi had struck a truce following which talks broke down in May this year, and tariffs on US$200bil of Chinese imports leaped from 10% to 25%.
Will there be light out of this tunnel, with harder issues involving tech and supremacy not tackled? Smaller economies with the fiscal and monetary space may be able to cushion their economies somewhat from the downdraft on growth.
Malaysia may, to a certain extent, be less vulnerable with the revival of major construction projects which in view of the country’s strained finances, have been shrunk to cut costs.
The Bandar Malaysia and East Coast Rail Link projects to be revived, are now downsized to RM144bil and RM44bil respectively.
Works for the Light Rail Transit (LRT) 3, from Bandar Utama in Petaling Jaya to Johan Setia in Klang, will resume in the second half of the year, at a reduced cost of RM16.63bil.
Talks are said to be ongoing to revive the Mass Rapid Transit Line (MRT) 3, or MRT Circle Line round the city centre, at possibly RM22.5bil which is half the original cost.
“The timing (of the revival of these projects) has been very good for Malaysia,’’ said Pong Teng Siew, the head of research at Inter-Pacific Securities. “These projects will go on for several years and positively impact the economy over that period.’’
Domestic spending and activities will provide ‘some comfort’ to the local economy but we should ensure that any further monetary easing actually goes into the real economy to support these activities, according to Anthony Dass, head of AmBank Research.
Malaysia’s private consumption was at a record 59.5% of its nominal (calculated at current market prices) Gross Domestic Product, which hit US$88.5 bil in March, 2019, according to CEIC Data.
Benefits from trade diversion from China, the current US tariff hotspot, are offset by downward pressure on global trade where volume was flat in the first quarter, the weakest since the financial crisis.
Global semiconductor sales also declined in February and March, the first back-to-back double digit contraction since the financial crisis.
In view of this decline, the volatile global trade environment and rising geopolitical tensions, open economies “should be prepared for the unexpected,’’ said Nor Zahidi Alias, the associate director of economic research of Malaysian Rating Corp.
The Singapore economy may undergo a “shallow, technical recession” in the third quarter, said Maybank Kim Eng, pointing to possible intensification of supply chain disruptions and US export controls on more Chinese tech firms.
Following the Trump-Xi talks, the US has reversed its equipment sales ban on Huawei but will that ease fears of other similar bans down the road? Defined as two consecutive quarters of negative quarter-on-quarter growth, a recession will prompt further easing of monetary policy in Singapore.
Manufacturing in Singapore, which accounts for a fifth of the economy, fell 2.4%, with electronics dropping 10.8% in May from a year ago; output is expected to decline again in June.
Hong Kong has also been issued warnings of recession, as its economy experienced the largest contraction since 2011, declining by 0.4% in the first quarter against the previous quarter.
Thailand’s economy grew at its slowest pace in four years, in the first quarter, hitting 2.8% from 3.6% in the same period last year; exports remain weak.
Taiwan’s economy avoided contraction in the first quarter but private consumption and gross capital formation slowed significantly while government consumption declined.
In the US, a mis-calibration in interest rate policy by the Federal Reserve can cause a sharper slowdown than expected or bring on a recession.“Monetary policy affects the economy with unpredictable lags, it could be hard for the Fed to time its policy (rate cut) that can prevent a downturn this and next year,’’ said Lee Heng Guie, the executive director of Socio Economic Research Center.
Columnist Yap Leng Kuen notes the reminder to ‘expect the unexpected.’
Even though there are signs of China-US trade frictions turning around, as the US political system will not fundamentally change in the short term, China must remain vigilant and prepare for a long-term trade war, in case the hawks gain the upper hand.
Unfazed, this mass comm graduate overcame all kinds of challenges to make it in business.
SAMANTHA Mah did well on her first business venture but suffered a loss on her second. However, failure did not deter her and her two partners from moving on. They gave it another go until they could see the fruits of their labour.
Mah worked as a company administrator and voice talent for radio commercials before she decided to venture into business.— aNis aBdullah/The star
Mah’s first business received an investment of RM10,000 from her sister, Natasha, 37. She and two investor-partners started an online boutique targeted at young women. After one-and-a-half years, business picked up and was quite good.
Mah, 30, is the youngest in her family. She has two elder sisters and a brother.
Mah, Natasha and a friend Jason Leong, 31, started their trading company on March 8, 2011. Just four months later, it incurred a big loss, prompting them to change the products they were selling – from peanuts and sesame seeds to edible organic products.
A mass communication graduate from Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) in Selangor, Mah had worked part-time as a company administrator and voice talent for radio commercials before she venturing into business. She is now the marketing manager/managing director of her company.
After starting Wide Tropism Trading, she passed her online boutique business to a friend.
One of the biggest challenges for Mah, at the beginning, was that neither she nor her partners had a corporate background.
“We handled matters based on our experiences. Sometimes we had to ask friends for advice.
“In the first few years, there were lots of arguments,” she said.
Mah is glad that her relationship with Natasha survived those trying times.
As part of the company’s costcutting measures, each of them had to take on more responsibilities in various departments.
“There were too many things on my plate – human resource, accounts, design and marketing – and I was suffocating. But we did not have enough (finances) to hire staff,” said Mah.
After two months, she “exploded” and cried during a meeting.
“I could not take the pressure and workload anymore,” she said.
Eventually, they could afford to hire new staff.
“Only then did things start to fall into place,” she said.
Cheated by a supplier
Initially, they were importing foods such as peanuts and sesame seeds, and distributing them to local suppliers. Unfortunately, they suffered a huge loss in the first year itself due to unscrupulous parties.
Due to limited cash flow, they could only import one container of stock at a time. Each time, they flew over to the exporting country, India, to check on the quality of the stock and witness the peanuts being loaded into the containers. The first two shipments went through successfully.
However, the third shipment, supposedly of Grade A peanuts, was discovered to contain Grade C stock instead, when it arrived.
She said: “No one in the market would accept the stock. We sought help from the local distributor to sell off the peanuts at a lower price but even then, no one wanted them. After trying for two months, we had to sell off the peanuts to a peanut butter factory at below cost. As a result, we ran into losses amounting to RM40,000.”
The supplier denied it was his fault and instead blamed others. They then contacted the High Commission of India, in Kuala Lumpur, for help but to no avail.
“We wondered how we were going to continue business. My father advised us to pick ourselves up, learn from it, and be more careful. Everyone was very supportive and encouraged us to continue. They believed we could do better,” she said.
Mah then sought help from her uncle, an experienced fruit trader and grocer. He advised her to run a business that’s less risky, such as repackaging and distributing organic products.
She and her business partners promptly took his advice.
In July 2011, her company had its first customer, a newly opened supermarket in Petaling Jaya. In two months, Mah’s team had designed the logo and sourced for products and packaging. And so, their label Love Earth was born.
Overcoming obstacles
Every day, Mah and her partners packed their products until midnight, and delivered them, working on weekends to selfpromote their products as well.
Said Mah: “Each time a new supermarket called, we’d celeto brate!”
Gradually, it was time start their expansion plan but they were hampered by limited cash flow.
They knew they had to spend more to create brand awareness. That’s when they started their online webstore.
“None of us had any knowledge about marketing. So I attended marketing and e-commerce talks to learn and see what we could do,” she said.
Mah recalled: “The first three years of business were really tough. My salary was only RM1,000 monthly (to cut costs).”
But their efforts paid off. After five years of sheer hard work, they could buy two units of four-storey shophouses.
The company started with 50 products and now has 180.
Currently, it is distributing these products to over 500 outlets throughout Malaysia.
New priorities
Mah, who got married two years ago, plans to expand her family this year. Her husband, C.V. Loh, 32, distributes bio-degradable plates, lunch boxes and bowls as well as health supplements.
She said: “I hope to have financial freedom, and more time for my family. If possible, I would like to be a part-time businesswoman and full-time housewife one day.”
She plans to raise her children herself and not send them to a nanny. She also hopes to travel more in the future. Presently, she travels at least thrice a year. Seeing other countries and cultures opens up one’s mind, she said.
Although she is a career woman, Mah believes in putting family first.
“Women play a role in bringing up the family. If a child is not well taught, he might be a nuisance to society in the future. But if he has a good upbringing, he can be the sun that shines and brings benefits to all. Also, a woman is the pillar that upholds the family,” she said.
Mah explained that even though she studied mass communication and broadcasting, it was during her internship that she realised that she wanted to go on a different career path than she had originally planned.
After her graduation, she thought of going into volunteer work. But her uncle advised against it. He told her to be successful so that she could help herself and others in future.
Unfazed, this mass comm graduate overcame all kinds of challenges to make it in business.
SAMANTHA Mah did well on her first business venture but suffered a loss on her second. However, failure did not deter her and her two partners from moving on. They gave it another go until they could see the fruits of their labour.
Mah worked as a company administrator and voice talent for radio commercials before she decided to venture into business.— aNis aBdullah/The star
Mah’s first business received an investment of RM10,000 from her sister, Natasha, 37. She and two investor-partners started an online boutique targeted at young women. After one-and-a-half years, business picked up and was quite good.
Mah, 30, is the youngest in her family. She has two elder sisters and a brother.
Mah, Natasha and a friend Jason Leong, 31, started their trading company on March 8, 2011. Just four months later, it incurred a big loss, prompting them to change the products they were selling – from peanuts and sesame seeds to edible organic products.
A mass communication graduate from Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) in Selangor, Mah had worked part-time as a company administrator and voice talent for radio commercials before she venturing into business. She is now the marketing manager/managing director of her company.
After starting Wide Tropism Trading, she passed her online boutique business to a friend.
One of the biggest challenges for Mah, at the beginning, was that neither she nor her partners had a corporate background.
“We handled matters based on our experiences. Sometimes we had to ask friends for advice.
“In the first few years, there were lots of arguments,” she said.
Mah is glad that her relationship with Natasha survived those trying times.
As part of the company’s costcutting measures, each of them had to take on more responsibilities in various departments.
“There were too many things on my plate – human resource, accounts, design and marketing – and I was suffocating. But we did not have enough (finances) to hire staff,” said Mah.
After two months, she “exploded” and cried during a meeting.
“I could not take the pressure and workload anymore,” she said. Eventually, they could afford to hire new staff.
“Only then did things start to fall into place,” she said.
Cheated by a supplier
Initially, they were importing foods such as peanuts and sesame seeds, and distributing them to local suppliers. Unfortunately, they suffered a huge loss in the first year itself due to unscrupulous parties.
Due to limited cash flow, they could only import one container of stock at a time. Each time, they flew over to the exporting country, India, to check on the quality of the stock and witness the peanuts being loaded into the containers. The first two shipments went through successfully.
However, the third shipment, supposedly of Grade A peanuts, was discovered to contain Grade C stock instead, when it arrived.
She said: “No one in the market would accept the stock. We sought help from the local distributor to sell off the peanuts at a lower price but even then, no one wanted them. After trying for two months, we had to sell off the peanuts to a peanut butter factory at below cost. As a result, we ran into losses amounting to RM40,000.”
The supplier denied it was his fault and instead blamed others. They then contacted the High Commission of India, in Kuala Lumpur, for help but to no avail.
“We wondered how we were going to continue business. My father advised us to pick ourselves up, learn from it, and be more careful. Everyone was very supportive and encouraged us to continue. They believed we could do better,” she said.
Mah then sought help from her uncle, an experienced fruit trader and grocer. He advised her to run a business that’s less risky, such as repackaging and distributing organic products.
She and her business partners promptly took his advice.
In July 2011, her company had its first customer, a newly opened supermarket in Petaling Jaya. In two months, Mah’s team had designed the logo and sourced for products and packaging. And so, their label Love Earth was born.
Overcoming obstacles
Every day, Mah and her partners packed their products until midnight, and delivered them, working on weekends to selfpromote their products as well.
Said Mah: “Each time a new supermarket called, we’d celeto brate!”
Gradually, it was time start their expansion plan but they were hampered by limited cash flow.
They knew they had to spend more to create brand awareness. That’s when they started their online webstore.
“None of us had any knowledge about marketing. So I attended marketing and e-commerce talks to learn and see what we could do,” she said.
Mah recalled: “The first three years of business were really tough. My salary was only RM1,000 monthly (to cut costs).”
But their efforts paid off. After five years of sheer hard work, they could buy two units of four-storey shophouses.
The company started with 50 products and now has 180.
Currently, it is distributing these products to over 500 outlets throughout Malaysia.
New priorities
Mah, who got married two years ago, plans to expand her family this year. Her husband, C.V. Loh, 32, distributes bio-degradable plates, lunch boxes and bowls as well as health supplements.
She said: “I hope to have financial freedom, and more time for my family. If possible, I would like to be a part-time businesswoman and full-time housewife one day.”
She plans to raise her children herself and not send them to a nanny. She also hopes to travel more in the future. Presently, she travels at least thrice a year. Seeing other countries and cultures opens up one’s mind, she said.
Although she is a career woman, Mah believes in putting family first.
“Women play a role in bringing up the family. If a child is not well taught, he might be a nuisance to society in the future. But if he has a good upbringing, he can be the sun that shines and brings benefits to all. Also, a woman is the pillar that upholds the family,” she said.
Mah explained that even though she studied mass communication and broadcasting, it was during her internship that she realised that she wanted to go on a different career path than she had originally planned.
After her graduation, she thought of going into volunteer work. But her uncle advised against it. He told her to be successful so that she could help herself and others in future.
A Huawei Technologies Co logo sits on display inside an electronic goods store in Berlin on December 17. Photo: VCG
Former Huawei employee in US laments government's 'endless assaults on the company'
○ Huawei's so-called 'wolf culture' helped it become successful in foreign countries
○ The top global telecom equipment provider has been going through a tough year in 2018
○ Chinese and foreign employees hold different views on Huawei's rapid expansion and aggressive corporate strategy
When Jason Li was assigned to the Mobile World Congress at the beginning of 2011, shortly after he joined China's Huawei Technologies, he impressed Ren Zhengfei, the former military officer who founded the company in 1987, with a presentation about the company's products in English.
"He [Ren] came to the company's stand the day before the congress kicked off and asked me where I studied before joining the company. I said New Zealand," Li said, noting that Ren immediately suggested that this newly recruited employee should fly to the UK office and help build a local talent center as part of Huawei's global expansion.
The Shenzhen-based company has experienced a rapid expansion over the past 30 years, and has footprints in more than 170 countries and regions. However, it has been under the spotlight recently as Meng Wanzhou - its chief financial officer - was arrested by the Canadian authorities in Vancouver on December 1 at the request of the US on suspicion of violating US trade sanctions.
Under pressure from the US, more governments in the West have been considering blocking Huawei's core products over security concerns, which is considered as a major setback in its development into a multinational giant.
Former employees of Huawei like Li spent years working overseas, and describe Huawei's corporate culture as a "wolf culture" that helped it become successful.
However, this "wolf culture" also sparked controversy, and might have harmed its current operations.
Arduous journey
When Li started working at Huawei's London office, he started everything from zero. From 2012 to 2014, he had traveled to over 20 countries and spent most of his days in countless hotels and airports, sacrificing much of his spare time to reach out to more foreign telecom carriers and companies.
"As soon as I left Egypt after a business trip to Cairo years ago, the country plunged into civil conflict, and some of my former coworkers were stuck in the hotel. And one time in Nigeria, we were exposed to yellow fever," he told the Global Times, referring to those days at Huawei as an unforgettable memory.
Long working hours on challenging projects with constant business trips to remote areas are common descriptions of the workplace culture at the world's largest telecoms equipment maker.
"Employees at Chinese telecom companies such as Huawei and ZTE endured hardships in an earlier stage of global expansion," Xiang Ligang, a veteran industry analyst close to Huawei, told the Global Times in a recent interview.
Ren, the founder of Huawei, is considered one of the most successful Chinese executives during the country's reform and opening-up. He was influenced by the military theories of Mao Zedong, according to a book on Huawei's development published in April.
Like Mao's military theories, which advocated taking small and medium cities and extensive rural areas first as part of a revolution, Ren started from remote and less developed areas to avoid fierce competition with foreign rivals.
"In some countries in Africa and South America, telecom operators could not afford expensive products. They also lacked staff members for maintenance and operations. This gave more room for companies like Huawei and ZTE, which continuously assigned staff to those areas, to grow," Xiang said.
Huawei beat Ericsson and Nokia in the global mobile infrastructure market in 2017, as the Chinese company took 28 percent of the market share and became the largest mobile infrastructure provider worldwide, according to the latest industry report from IHS.
"In the early days, Huawei assigned most of its senior executives to the overseas market to explore business opportunities," Xiang said, noting that accepting these assignments later became an unwritten rule.
Lingering conflicts
Huawei's corporate culture has a long-lasting influence on its staff. An former employee who worked as a programmer at Huawei's then headquarters in Nanshan district, Shenzhen in the early 2000s said that he worked for Huawei for about one year and a half shortly after he graduated from college but the short experience there has instilled a lasting impact on his future career. He learned to be hardworking, persistent and low-key.
Even after he left Huawei, he sometimes, as if he had been brainwashed, still would read aloud the internal letters written by Ren Zhengfei circulated online to his then-girlfriend-now-wife, partly as a way to woo and impress her, and partly as a way to draw inspiration and strength for himself.
The employee in his early 40s who only spoke on condition of anonymity said he worked long hours from about 10 am to 10 pm every working day at Huawei. When he was tired, he would sleep on the mattress under his desk. "All co-workers did the same, especially the managers," he said. "When a new project kicked in, we would work overnight."
This so-called wolf spirit - a high-pressure workplace - is also known as a "mattress culture," as many of its engineers work so hard that they use blankets and mattresses to sleep at the office. And this military-style management was sometimes rejected by its foreign staff overseas, which led to deeper culture clashes.
"As far as I know about this so-called military style management, it's implementing the corporate policy in the most efficient way," Li said.
For example, when he worked at the company's London office, all the staff there were required to punch in and out every day, following strict discipline.
"Sometimes, foreign employees preferred more flexible working hours, especially when it was bad weather. But the headquarters rejected this request," he said, noting that localizing its business in foreign markets was a bumpy road over some similar daily issues.
For some foreign employees, being part of a growing Chinese company is still remarkable experience.
"I have great respect for what the company has achieved… Huawei's growth and expansion have been amazingly impressive. It was exciting to be a part of that," William Plummer, the company's former US vice president of external affairs, told the Global Times.
Plummer, who is considered an eight-year veteran bridging the Chinese company with the US government, was reportedly laid off by Huawei in April amid rising tension between China and the US.
He noted that the experience with Huawei was sometimes frustrating both "due to the US government's endless assaults on the company, and the company's inability to trust and listen to non-Chinese experts in dealing with such matters."
The company has been going through a tough year in 2018. In January, major US carrier AT&T suspended potential cooperation with Huawei in its mobile business over security concerns.
And the "Five Eyes" nations (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, US) decided to take aim at all Chinese telecoms equipment companies. Australia slashed its use of Chinese-made products in August, followed by New Zealand and the UK.
In particular, the US government targeted Huawei for years, as American counterintelligence agents and prosecutors began exploring possible cases against its leadership back in 2010, according to the New York Times.
Focus on own work
After Meng's arrest, several of Huawei's Chinese employees shared posts on their social media accounts to support each other, claiming that the company can definitely get through this difficult time.
"It will survive widespread bans in Western countries … and we should focus on our own work," a current employee at the company told the Global Times.
Some observers suggested that Huawei's foreign and Chinese staff, who often hold different attitudes in the workplace, may see its struggles in a different light.
Many Chinese staff work very hard overseas because of Huawei's incentive stock options. "Three years after I joined Huawei, I earned about 300,000 yuan ($43,500) a year, and my bonus was almost the same as my basic salary," said a former Chinese employee "Eric," who worked at Huawei from 2009 to 2013 and spent a year in Mumbai, India.
Working long hours is driven by growing business. Many employees understand that the better financial performance Huawei has, the more profits its employees could share in accordance to employee stock ownership plans.
However, to become a true global tech firm, Huawei will need to diversify its leadership, Plummer suggested.
As the case of Meng has entered the judicial system, some believe that Huawei's situation will get worse, even though there is no proof for the US allegations.
Looking into this dilemma, the company's aggressive and customer-centered business strategies might have helped its take over as much market share as possible.
"But in the long run, as a private company that insists on not going public, its opaque financial status also raises questions over its sustainability," Eric said.
The past year was a tough year for China-US relations. From Washington DC to Iowa to Seattle, this Global Times reporter recently talked to over 50 government officials, scholars, reporters, businessmen and farmers in the US and asked them what they think of the trade war and China-US relations
China should be confident in this: As long as China maintains steady peripheral diplomacy, the US can do nothing to China and Beijing will gain the initiative in diplomacy toward Washington.
A Huawei Technologies Co logo sits on display inside an electronic goods store in Berlin on December 17. Photo: VCG
Former Huawei employee in US laments government's 'endless assaults on the company'
○ Huawei's so-called 'wolf culture' helped it become successful in foreign countries
○ The top global telecom equipment provider has been going through a tough year in 2018
○ Chinese and foreign employees hold different views on Huawei's rapid expansion and aggressive corporate strategy
When Jason Li was assigned to the Mobile World Congress at the beginning of 2011, shortly after he joined China's Huawei Technologies, he impressed Ren Zhengfei, the former military officer who founded the company in 1987, with a presentation about the company's products in English.
"He [Ren] came to the company's stand the day before the congress kicked off and asked me where I studied before joining the company. I said New Zealand," Li said, noting that Ren immediately suggested that this newly recruited employee should fly to the UK office and help build a local talent center as part of Huawei's global expansion.
The Shenzhen-based company has experienced a rapid expansion over the past 30 years, and has footprints in more than 170 countries and regions. However, it has been under the spotlight recently as Meng Wanzhou - its chief financial officer - was arrested by the Canadian authorities in Vancouver on December 1 at the request of the US on suspicion of violating US trade sanctions.
Under pressure from the US, more governments in the West have been considering blocking Huawei's core products over security concerns, which is considered as a major setback in its development into a multinational giant.
Former employees of Huawei like Li spent years working overseas, and describe Huawei's corporate culture as a "wolf culture" that helped it become successful.
However, this "wolf culture" also sparked controversy, and might have harmed its current operations.
Arduous journey
When Li started working at Huawei's London office, he started everything from zero. From 2012 to 2014, he had traveled to over 20 countries and spent most of his days in countless hotels and airports, sacrificing much of his spare time to reach out to more foreign telecom carriers and companies.
"As soon as I left Egypt after a business trip to Cairo years ago, the country plunged into civil conflict, and some of my former coworkers were stuck in the hotel. And one time in Nigeria, we were exposed to yellow fever," he told the Global Times, referring to those days at Huawei as an unforgettable memory.
Long working hours on challenging projects with constant business trips to remote areas are common descriptions of the workplace culture at the world's largest telecoms equipment maker.
"Employees at Chinese telecom companies such as Huawei and ZTE endured hardships in an earlier stage of global expansion," Xiang Ligang, a veteran industry analyst close to Huawei, told the Global Times in a recent interview.
Ren, the founder of Huawei, is considered one of the most successful Chinese executives during the country's reform and opening-up. He was influenced by the military theories of Mao Zedong, according to a book on Huawei's development published in April.
Like Mao's military theories, which advocated taking small and medium cities and extensive rural areas first as part of a revolution, Ren started from remote and less developed areas to avoid fierce competition with foreign rivals.
"In some countries in Africa and South America, telecom operators could not afford expensive products. They also lacked staff members for maintenance and operations. This gave more room for companies like Huawei and ZTE, which continuously assigned staff to those areas, to grow," Xiang said.
Huawei beat Ericsson and Nokia in the global mobile infrastructure market in 2017, as the Chinese company took 28 percent of the market share and became the largest mobile infrastructure provider worldwide, according to the latest industry report from IHS.
"In the early days, Huawei assigned most of its senior executives to the overseas market to explore business opportunities," Xiang said, noting that accepting these assignments later became an unwritten rule.
Lingering conflicts
Huawei's corporate culture has a long-lasting influence on its staff. An former employee who worked as a programmer at Huawei's then headquarters in Nanshan district, Shenzhen in the early 2000s said that he worked for Huawei for about one year and a half shortly after he graduated from college but the short experience there has instilled a lasting impact on his future career. He learned to be hardworking, persistent and low-key.
Even after he left Huawei, he sometimes, as if he had been brainwashed, still would read aloud the internal letters written by Ren Zhengfei circulated online to his then-girlfriend-now-wife, partly as a way to woo and impress her, and partly as a way to draw inspiration and strength for himself.
The employee in his early 40s who only spoke on condition of anonymity said he worked long hours from about 10 am to 10 pm every working day at Huawei. When he was tired, he would sleep on the mattress under his desk. "All co-workers did the same, especially the managers," he said. "When a new project kicked in, we would work overnight."
This so-called wolf spirit - a high-pressure workplace - is also known as a "mattress culture," as many of its engineers work so hard that they use blankets and mattresses to sleep at the office. And this military-style management was sometimes rejected by its foreign staff overseas, which led to deeper culture clashes.
"As far as I know about this so-called military style management, it's implementing the corporate policy in the most efficient way," Li said.
For example, when he worked at the company's London office, all the staff there were required to punch in and out every day, following strict discipline.
"Sometimes, foreign employees preferred more flexible working hours, especially when it was bad weather. But the headquarters rejected this request," he said, noting that localizing its business in foreign markets was a bumpy road over some similar daily issues.
For some foreign employees, being part of a growing Chinese company is still remarkable experience.
"I have great respect for what the company has achieved… Huawei's growth and expansion have been amazingly impressive. It was exciting to be a part of that," William Plummer, the company's former US vice president of external affairs, told the Global Times.
Plummer, who is considered an eight-year veteran bridging the Chinese company with the US government, was reportedly laid off by Huawei in April amid rising tension between China and the US.
He noted that the experience with Huawei was sometimes frustrating both "due to the US government's endless assaults on the company, and the company's inability to trust and listen to non-Chinese experts in dealing with such matters."
The company has been going through a tough year in 2018. In January, major US carrier AT&T suspended potential cooperation with Huawei in its mobile business over security concerns.
And the "Five Eyes" nations (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, US) decided to take aim at all Chinese telecoms equipment companies. Australia slashed its use of Chinese-made products in August, followed by New Zealand and the UK.
In particular, the US government targeted Huawei for years, as American counterintelligence agents and prosecutors began exploring possible cases against its leadership back in 2010, according to the New York Times.
Focus on own work
After Meng's arrest, several of Huawei's Chinese employees shared posts on their social media accounts to support each other, claiming that the company can definitely get through this difficult time.
"It will survive widespread bans in Western countries … and we should focus on our own work," a current employee at the company told the Global Times.
Some observers suggested that Huawei's foreign and Chinese staff, who often hold different attitudes in the workplace, may see its struggles in a different light.
Many Chinese staff work very hard overseas because of Huawei's incentive stock options. "Three years after I joined Huawei, I earned about 300,000 yuan ($43,500) a year, and my bonus was almost the same as my basic salary," said a former Chinese employee "Eric," who worked at Huawei from 2009 to 2013 and spent a year in Mumbai, India.
Working long hours is driven by growing business. Many employees understand that the better financial performance Huawei has, the more profits its employees could share in accordance to employee stock ownership plans.
However, to become a true global tech firm, Huawei will need to diversify its leadership, Plummer suggested.
As the case of Meng has entered the judicial system, some believe that Huawei's situation will get worse, even though there is no proof for the US allegations.
Looking into this dilemma, the company's aggressive and customer-centered business strategies might have helped its take over as much market share as possible.
"But in the long run, as a private company that insists on not going public, its opaque financial status also raises questions over its sustainability," Eric said.
The past year was a tough year for China-US relations.
From Washington DC to Iowa to Seattle, this Global Times reporter
recently talked to over 50 government officials, scholars, reporters,
businessmen and farmers in the US and asked them what they think of the
trade war and China-US relations
China should be confident in this: As long as China
maintains steady peripheral diplomacy, the US can do nothing to China
and Beijing will gain the initiative in diplomacy toward Washington.
On the rise: A man walks past the Employees
Provident Fund headquarters in Kuala Lumpur. Remuneration of GLC chiefs,
senior management and directors have been on the uptrend following a
transformation initiative to make them more competitive commercially.
Overpaid CEOs and social duties of GLCs set for review
The new government has clearly said that there is a need to review the role of GLCs and the remuneration paid out to their top executives
A GLANCE at one of the annual reports of the country’s government-linked companies (GLCs) reveals that its chief human resource officer earned close to a million ringgit or about RM80,000 per month, last year.
Other senior personnel were also compensated with generous remuneration, with its chief executive taking home over one and the half million ringgit in financial year 2017.
More importantly, this was at a company that had courted much controversy in recent times over allegations of mismanagement and under-performance.
Such a scenario, however, is not uncommon at GLCs, where remuneration of key executives tend to run in the millions but performances sometimes leave much to be desired.
By definition, GLCs are companies where the government has a direct majority stake via their entities such as Khazanah Nasional, Employees Provident Fund, Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB), the Armed Forces Fund (Lembaga Tabung Angkatan Tentera) and the Pilgrims Fund (Lembaga Tabung Haji).
In recent years, remuneration of GLC chiefs, senior management and its directors have been on the uptrend following a transformation initiative to make them more competitive commercially.
The thinking behind this is that in order to attract talent – subjective as the definition of that may be – top dollar should be paid.
Some, however, argue that GLCs should in fact prioritise national service a little more.
Universiti Malaya’s Faculty of Economics and Administration professor of political economy Edmund Terence Gomez says GLCs have social obligations.
“What this essentially means is that GLCs cannot operate in a purely commercial manner as they also have to look at the social dimension,” he says. “The GLC professionals have many times articulated that they are doing national service. Going on that alone, one can argue that they shouldn’t be paid private sector salaries,” Terence adds.
And so it is now, there is a disquiet building up among GLCs following the change in government.
The new government has clearly said that there is a need to review the role of GLCs and the remuneration paid out to their top executives and senior management.
In this regard, the Pakatan Harapan government is understood to be mulling over making drastic changes in the appointment and remuneration of key directors at GLCs which include government agencies.
It was reported recently that the Council of Eminent Persons, headed by Tun Daim Zainuddin, who was Finance Minister in the 1980s, has requested details of the salaries of some of the top executives at GLCs as part of the review.
Already, there have been a couple of GLC chief executives who have left and more of this is expected to materialise over the coming weeks.
“It appears to be a purge of Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop’s boys,” quips an industry observer, referring to the veteran politician who was instrumental in the revamp and transformation of Khazanah which started in 2005 and subsequently, driving the GLC transformation initiative.
UM’s Terence says if the new government is to appoint new individuals, it must ensure that the process is transparent.
“If you are removing these people, who are you replacing them with? More importantly how are you selecting these people?
He adds there needs to be a transparent mechanism in the appointment of this new breed of professionals that will be brought in and what must also be looked into is the kind of check and balances being put in place to ensure governance.
“There should be a debate on these things,” he says.
Economist Yeah Kim Leng believes that a review is timely and appropriate as part of a deeper institutional and structural reform.
“The broad aims are firstly, to reduce excessive payoffs which don’t commensurate with performance and secondly, to address the widening wage and benefits gap between the top and bottom rungs of the organisation,” he says.
Such rationalisation will result in a more equitable salary structure as well as raise the generally depressed wages of middle management and support staff which form the largest number of most organisations, Yeah adds.
Unfair advantage
The role of a head honcho, be it at a GLC or non-GLC, is seldom a walk in the park.
CEOs make critical operational decisions that affect everything from future business directions to the health of a company’s balance sheet and employee morale.
The job generally entails long hours and tremendous pressure to meet expectations of shareholders and stakeholders.
But again, while local GLCs have been key drivers of the economy, one key feature is that they are ultimately owned by the government.
This, some argue, give GLCs unfair advantages such as access to cheap funding and political patronage over their private counterparts.
So, is running a GLC more of a stewardship role as opposed to an entrepreneurship role?
Therein lies the issue that in turn will have a bearing on the remuneration levels of GLC heads.
Minority Shareholders Watch Group (MSWG) chief executive office Devanesan Evanson puts it this way.
“Entrepreneurs have their skin in the game in that there are often the major or substantial shareholder in a company.
“It is in their direct interest to perform as this will be translated into share price appreciation which will impact the value of their shareholdings – this is motivation to grow the entrepreneurial spirit,” he says.
On the other hand, GLC heads do not have their skin in the game save for their limited shareholding through ESOS or share grant schemes.
“If a GLC loses money, the impact on them is limited. They may be prepared to take perverse risks as the eventual loser is the government-linked investment companies or GLICs (and the minority shareholders of the GLC), which eventually are the people who are the members or subscribers of the GLICs.
“In that way, we are not comparing apple to apple and yet, we need talent to run GLCs.
“So we can conclude that, we need to pay for talent at GLCs but it should not be as much compared to what one would pay the CEO of a firm which he started,” Devanesan says, noting that remuneration of some of the GLC heads have risen too fast in recent years.
Rising remuneration is a given, others say, as the government had recruited top talent from the private sector to helm these companies.
A case in point is Axiata Group Bhd, which has done relatively well with the infusion of the “entrepreneurial spirit” under the helm of president and group CEO Tan Sri Jamaludin Ibrahim, who has helmed the Khazanah-owned telco since 2008, they point out.
Prior to that, Jamaludin was with rival Maxis Communications Bhd, a private company controlled by tycoon Ananda Krishnan.
Other GLCs which have performed consistently over recent years include banks like Malayan Banking Bhd
and CIMB Group Holdings Bhd which have expanded their operations out of Malaysia, carving a brand name for themselves regionally.
Under a 10-year transformation programme for GLCs initiated in 2005, companies were given quantitative and qualitative targets to meet as measured by key performance indicators.
Now, the 20 biggest GLCs currently make up about 40% of the local stock market’s market capitalisation.
One of the principles under the programme was also the national development agenda, which emphasised the principle of equal growth and development of the bumiputra community with the non-bumiputras.
Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute (ASLI) Centre of Public Policy Studies chairperson Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam says the purpose of establishing GLCs to encourage bumiputras to participate in business has largely been fulfilled.
“Now that the bumiputras are on a strong footing in the corporate sector with able leaders who have wide experience, it (GLCs) could be seen as an erosion to the welfare and progress of the smaller and medium-sized industries, particularly those where other bumiputras are involved,” Ramon says.
Having said that, he says although many GLCs are doing well, they have performed well “mainly because of protective policies and monopolistic practices”.
“The time has come in this new Malaysian era for more competition and less protection.”
Benchmarking
Still, if simplistic comparisons are to be made, the CEOs of the country’s two largest GLC banks, Maybank and CIMB for instance, took home less than the CEO of the country’s third largest bank, the non-GLC Public Bank Bhd
last year.
In 2017, Public Bank’s managing director Tan Sri Tay Ah Lek took home some RM27.8mil in total remuneration while Maybank’s Datuk Abdul Farid Alias earned RM10.11mil and CIMB’s Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz made RM9.86mil.
Across the causeway, a survey of CEO remuneration of Singapore-listed companies by one financial portal shows that Singaporean GLC CEOs earned 31% more than their non-GLC counterparts in 2017.
Singapore’s Temasek Holdings-owned DBS Bank, which is Singapore’s largest bank, paid out S$10.3mil (RM30.36mil) to its head honcho, while in the telecommunication sector, SingTel’s remuneration to its top executive was some S$6.56mil (RM19.34mil) for the most recently concluded financial year.
By definition, Singapore GLCs are those which are 15% or more owned by the city-state’s investment arm Temasek Holdings.
UM’s Terence does not think Singapore should be a benchmark for Malaysian companies.
“Singapore is a much smaller country and the manner in which they operate in is also different ... their GLCs are deeply conditioned by their holding company, which is the Minister of Finance Incorporated,” he says.
MSWG’s Devanesan notes that determining remuneration is “not exactly science” as there are many parameters to be considered.
Some of the factors to note include whether the companies are in a monopolistic or near monopolistic position and the performance of the GLC heads over the years.
“Based on these parameters, we can instinctively know if a GLC head is over-remunerated,” he says. Over in China, state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the country’s largest lender by assets, paid out about 63.43 yuan or about RM39mil in total remuneration before tax for the year 2017 to its top executive.
Notably, the Beijing-based ICBC’s net profit’s was at a whopping US$45.6bil (RM182bil) in 2017.
Sources: Gurmeet Kaur and Yvonne Tan The Star
GLC singers sing a different tune
Some officials singing 'Hebat Negaraku'.
Swan song for some after 'Hebat Negaraku' post-GE14 - CEO think video to showcase musical talents
Several heads of government-linked companies (GLCs) have come together
in a heartwarming music video titled "Hebat Negaraku" (my country is
great).
The heads of government linked companies (GLC) who sang a song that later became the theme song for the Barisan Nasional’s election campaign have distanced themselves from the controversial music video.
Those who sang and played musical instruments in the music video titled “Hebat Negaraku” (my country is great) said they did not know the video or the song was going to be a political theme song.
There have been repercussions on the CEOs who appeared in the music video. They have come under scrutiny for making a song that was used as propaganda by Barisan in the last general election.
Three of the GLC bosses in the video have either retired or resigned since the new government took over.
Several more have been speculated to leave in the coming weeks or months but nothing is cast in stone. Sources said this is because most of the CEOs are not known to have campaigned openly for either Barisan or Pakatan Harapan.
“None of the CEOs had a clue it would become a political song. Do you really think the CEOs would have done it if they knew it would become political?” asked one of the CEOs who appeared in the video but declined to be named.
“We have said no to so many things, and we could have easily have said no to this if it was political.’’
Another CEO said he was approached and felt it was “more of a patriotic song and nothing more.”
“At that point in time, we did not think much (of the repercussions). Hebat Negaraku was announced as Barisan’s campaign theme long after the recording was made. We did not know that.’’
Another CEO added: “We thought it was a casual thing when we were approached as some of the CEOs have their own band.’’
It all started when several CEOs were called to be part of a music video and they thought it was to showcase the musical talents of 14 GLCs heads, plus staff members of the 20 key GLCs.
The song is about the greatness, advancement and inspiration of Malaysia. It was released on YouTube on March 22 but has since been taken down.
But fingers have been pointed at the GLCs bosses who made the music video because it became a political video.
Datuk Seri Shazalli Ramly has been said to be the main orchestrator for the group in terms of making the music video. He was also said to be the branding chief for Barisan’s elections campaign.
Barisan lost the elections held on May 9 to Pakatan, which has since formed a new government and is scrutinising all the performance, processes, remuneration and procurement of the government and GLCs.
Shazalli quit his job as group CEO of Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) on June 6. Malaysian Resources Corp
Bhd (MRCB) group managing director Tan Sri Mohamad Salim Fateh Din has retired as group MD last week and it was something he had planned to do. Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd
Datuk Badlisham Ghazali did not get his contract renewed. All three were in the music video.
There is a GLC secretariat that now comes under the purview of TM, which was earlier parked under Khazanah Nasional Bhd. The secretariat organised the making of the music video, according to sources. The CEOs were called to attend a session and within a few hours it was all done with no prior rehearsals.
“When you are called, it could be difficult not to comply since it is the secretariat that called you. We have to oblige but we really did not know it was going to be a campaign slogan. This is really unfortunate that it has turned out like this.
“We were surprised when we found out it was a party slogan but it had already been done and what can we do, we are in the picture,’’ said another CEO.
Not all CEOs who were invited took part in the video. Prior engagements were the reason used for declining to appear. - By b.k. Sidhu The Star
