Tough job for Petronas new boss

Singapore

SOMETIME in the middle of last year, Shamsul Azhar Abbas, the boss of Malaysia's oil giant Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas), publicly expounded the virtues of meritocracy and belaboured the point that the country's oil resources belonged to all Malaysians, not just ethnic Malays.

Mr Shamsul's views were by no means wild and irrational - in fact, their commonplace sensibility resonated with a larger swathe of Malaysians - but coming from the chief of a firm that's the biggest contributor to government coffers and that is controlled by a state that largely favours Malays or Bumiputras, they were construed as out of line, arrogant even, and a challenge to the country's powers-that-be.

"He (Shamsul) had stretched the meritocracy mantra too far, which made some powerful people unhappy," said an insider…