Minority shareholders to make the call on MAS’ fate

The fate of the jilted Malaysia Airlines will be decided today as minority shareholders will vote at and extraordinary general meeting (EGM) on whether or not they would rather privatisation of the airline.Government agency Khazanah Nasional Bhd, which currently has a 69.37% equity interest in MAS, is reportedly offering minority shareholders an exit from MAS at 27 sen a share, which totals up to a buy out of RM1.4 billion. According to an article on The Star, the next 29 of its biggest shareholders rally up to only 6.57% of its total shareholding base. The remaining approximately 24% of shares lie with minority shareholders such as MAS employees. The report also stated that Khazanah needs 90% acceptance from shareholders to de-list MAS from Bursa Malaysia.Over the months, countless reports have emerged on the brand reforming and restructuring its team.  Several global reports also indicated that over 19,000 staff members would lose their jobs due to the restructuring and publications globally have also made numerous speculations as to who would helm the CEO role for the struggling airline.In an earlier article done by Advertising + Marketing ,we asked several industry executives their opinion on the possibility of the brand being saved.CEO of Consulus, Lawrence Chong, noted that the impact of the recent unfortunate incidents would not go away any time soon. For instance, simply because of the prolonged search mission, anytime an update comes up on the mission, it would be a reminder of the incident.“Malaysian Airlines is probably damaged in the same way as Pan Am was, by the 1988 Lockerbie bombing incident, of which Pan Am never recovered from and eventually went into liquidation. So I would rate the damage as a near fatal blow, given the fact that Malaysian Airlines was already trying to revive its business prior to the incident,” said Chong.He added that an event like this would affect much of what the company is trying to do. On top of this, MAS has strong competition on the home ground from AirAsia and other international carriers.MAS first suspended its shares in Kuala Lumpur in August this year.