Malaysia’s CIMB arrives

On a humid evening in late August, half a dozen workers down their tools and adjourn to temporary accommodation in the shadows of the Ar-Rahah Mosque, which they are building alongside a gleaming new business park in central Kuala Lumpur. Moulds, wheelbarrows and panes of glassare scattered beneath the scaffolding and the smell of fresh bitumen emanates from the newly laid car park.

The mosque, which is nearly complete, is testament to the skill of the builders: vast geometric patterns race up the interior, colliding with verses from the Koran, preaching the wisdom of prayer, on the white walls. A splendid red and gold carpet is rolled out amid the debris, pointing towards the Universiti Malaya, and beyond that, Mecca.

The mosque is a gift from Nazir Razak, 45, group chief executive of Malaysian bank CIMB Group, to his mother, Tun Rahah Mohd Noah, 79, the former first lady of Malaysia.

“I just woke up one day and said that is one thing I want to do for my mother,” Nazir says about his motivation for building it.

But the mosque is more than a gift: it reflects the apotheosis of his family. Nazir’s father, Tun Abdul Razak, was the second prime minister of Malaysia; his brother, Najib Razak, is the current prime minister.

While the name Razak is omnipresent in Malaysia, few advisers in Australia had heard of Nazir – or CIMB – at the start of this year.

This changed in March, when CIMB bought, for 75 million ($115.8 million), the Asia-Pacific cash equities and investment banking assets of the Royal Bank of Scotland, including in Australia. This has made Nazir the boss of the new kid on the investment banking block in Australia.

Its Australian leadership team of Nick Rowe, Simon Perrott and Randolf Clinton, who all joined CIMB from RBS, should be handing out CIMB business cards from the first week of November, once the regulator’s testing of new trading systems is complete.

While some local investment banking leaders are sceptical that CIMB will make much of an impact on the scene here, Nazir has big plans for his new Australian flock, whose remit will not be confined to the continent.

“It’s not just about them joining you, it’s about you making them better as a result of you being the new shareholder,” he says of his management philosophy for integrating recruits. “I spend an equal amount of time thinking what I can do for them, what business we can pipe through to them and help them generate. I am very big on integration and leverage.

“Many of the Australian team members are too talented to just be in the Australian market. I would like them to be the centre of excellence for some of the sector coverage across the Asian region. That’s a big opportunity for them, and a big one for me. Now, it’s about making it happen, and convincing everybody to work accordingly.”

Nazir has had a good deal of experience of late in convincing a diverse group of bankers, from a range of cultures around the region, to sing from the same hymn sheet. The RBS deal is part of the Nazir-led expansion at CIMB, which has undergone explosive growth while maintaining a return on equity of about 16per cent. The recent deals include buying 60per cent of Philippines lender Bank of Commerce for $US280 million in May, and taking a 70per cent stake Sicco Securities a year ago to boost presence in Thailand.

CIMB now has extensive banking operations in nine of the 10 countries of the Association of South-East Asian Nations, or ASEAN (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Burma, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) and is applying for a licence in the last, Laos. This positioning is a big play on the future of the regional body, which was founded out of anti-communist solidarity in the late ’60s, as it seeks closer economic ties between its members.

There are many benefits of capturing the economic momentum: in the ASEAN 10, home to 600million people, average gross domestic product is growing by almost 8per cent a year and the bloc would be the world’s fifth-largest economy (after the US, China, India and Japan). Further removal of non-tariff trade barriers to allow the freer movement of goods, workers and capital will serve to harmonise the region’s financial markets.