The culture of Kiam-siap (Thrifty)

We had the opportunity to interact with the new acting President/CEO of Sime Darby via a townhall session conducted yesterday. After all the bad news and huge losses suffered by the Energy and Utility Division of the company, I guess the employees are eager to hear from the new President himself what he has to offer to make Sime a more successful company or rather how can he steer the company out of the recent blunder of the E&U division. Since the disclosure of the huge provision for losses for E&U, the share prices of Sime had been spiraling downward causing once the biggest company in term of market capitalization in Bursa Malaysia to shamefully shrink into the third position behind Maybank and Public bank.

This man, from the first impression is down to earth sort of person, not the usually flamboyant or gung-ho types of businessmen we always see. He speaks business and he means business. Hence, no extravagant expenditures one can expect from him. He had said that it was no point spending lots of money to decorate his office with Versace outfits and expensive furniture and so on but if there is a need to expand the business he will spend. Quoting an example of when he was negotiating the sugar business with Robert Kuok’s Perlis Plantation, he was rather impressed with the thrift culture adopted by Robert Kuok. The office of PPB was simple, and the breakfast provided during the negotiations was also simple, just coffee, tea and some nyonya kuih. But if you walk into any Shangri-La Hotel, you will get the first class reception with all the premier facilities. To make it simple, Datuk Bekke reiterated that, the culture of thrift will be the way going forward, spending money at the right place to generate more values for the company and shareholders, and stop all unnecessary spending.

He originated from Penang and thus I guess he knows a little bit of Hokkein, he mentioned the word “kiam-siap” which means thrifty and his speech was basically surrounded by the culture of thrift and cost efficiency. Unlike the usually gung-ho types of businessmen, this time around we have a person who speaks business and means business to helm the company. He had mentioned during the townhall that the “bleeding” has stopped with all the provision have been made to counter the losses of E&U Division. Hence let begin a new journey with a down-to-earth captain to sail through the varying sea and wind conditions, exploring the new frontier.