KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 17 — The addition of national carmaker Proton to Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary’s growing empire yesterday has economists concerned that too much strategic corporate wealth is being accumulated in the hands of an elite few in the country.
Apart from Proton, the media-shy tycoon recently acquired Pos Malaysia, also from state investment arm Khazanah, and is reportedly pursuing rail service operator KTM. He is also poised to enter the telecommunications space via newcomer Puncak Semangat, which was reported to be among the biggest winners of 4G spectrum allocations.
His flagship enterprises — MMC Corp and DRB-Hicom — are also involved in a wide array of nationally strategic sectors and industries from the KL MRT project to multi-billion defence contracts, from rice and sugar to ports and independent power generation.
“Concentration of corporate wealth in an elite few is not good for any economic system,” said Edmund Terence Gomez, a political economist with the University of Malaya when asked about Khazanah’s move to sell its stake to Syed Mokhtar’s DRB-Hicom. “The state should be concerned about concentration of wealth.”
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