Banker: Malaysia will pull through financial storm

KUALA LUMPUR : Malaysia’s relative insulation from global capital markets will help it pull through the current global financial storm, but a slowdown in domestic capital markets is to be expected, said CIMB Group chief executive officer Datuk Seri Nazir Razak.
“Malaysia is relatively insulated and this is one time that you thank your lucky stars that we are quite insulated. We have not been that active in global capital markets,” he told reporters yesterday.
Nazir said all markets were affected by the present climate in international capital markets.
“At some level, it is one village. We expect that there will be a slow level of capital market activity in Malaysia under the prevailing conditions,” he said.
Asian bourses, like other stock markets around the world, have been rocked after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc filed for bankruptcy protection and insurer American International Group Inc was bailed out by the US government.
“If you look at the outcome of this crisis, the rules of the game is going to be reviewed, governance of banks, accounting policies, securities industry, regulation will be reviewed on a global basis,” Nazir said. “Some people say Lehman Brothers did not die a natural death; it was murdered in the sense it was killed by short sellers.”
On whether the the local capital market was affected by the global economic meltdown or the domestic political uncertainty, he said : “We are not helping ourselves, but the the global issues in the past few weeks have overtaken domestic issues in the eyes of foreign investors.”
“I see one big drought in the capital market. In this environment, we’ll all be scrambling for whatever piece of business that’s left. So in that scenario, if it means that we have to cause pain to the smaller players, we will do it,”he said.
Meanwhile, Nazir said he expected the bank’s newly launched Max InvestSave PSSIA-i product to “fly and take the market by storm” as structured investments of this nature were previously only available to more affluent customers because of the high minimum investment needed.
“For as little as RM50, customers can invest in a capital-protected instrument for tenures of 15,20,25 or 30 years that pays out a profit based on the highest value achieved during its tenure,” he said.
“We have five million customers, so we will expect the vast majority of them to jump on board.”

tunku : i hope nazir is right when he said that we have to thank our lucky star that we are quite insulated. we will surely be hit by the crisis and we hope that it is not a worst one.see what tun mahathir has to say about the financial turmoil,here. let us pray hard that GOD save our country from any financial crisis and from traitors.let us work hard to ensure that we will overcome any crisis we are facing.