MAS confirms Ahmad Jauhari as MD
Malaysia Airlines (MAS) has confirmed corporate veteran Ahmad Jauhari Yahya as its new managing director in a filing to the Bursa Malaysia this evening. The appointment is to be effective September 19, 2011. The Malaysian Insider reported his appointment.
He was also appointed as a Khazanah Nasional Berhad nominee in the Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd board last March. The state asset manager is the largest shareholder in MAS.
Ahmad Jauhari (picture) is currently a non-independent, non-executive director in Malaysia Airport Holdings Bhd. He takes over from Tengku Dato’ Sri Azmil Zahruddin who left last August.
Prior to his appointment in MAS, Encik Ahmad Jauhari was managing director/CEO of Premium Renewable Energy (M) Sdn Bhd. He has had a vast and diverse working experience in various industries which includes oil & gas, publication, engineering, power and energy.
He started his career with ESSO Malaysia Berhad before joining The New Straits Times Press (M) Berhad, where he rose to the rank of Senior Group General Manager, Production and Circulation in 1990.
In 1992, he went to become deputy managing director and was subsequently made managing director of Time Engineering Bhd in the same year.
He then served as the managing director of Malaysian Resources Corporation Bhd and Malakoff Bhd.
Ahmad Jauhari is also not new in managing organisations on the international front as he had also served as director and chairman of Executive Committee of Central Electricity Generating Company Ltd (Jordan) and a director of Shuaibah Expansion Project Company Ltd (Saudi Arabia). He is also the former honorary president of Penjanabebas (Association of Independent Power Producers in Malaysia).
Ahmad Jauhari holds a Bachelor of Science (Hons) Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from University of Nottingham, United Kingdom.
He is expected to have his hands full dealing with MAS’s three in-house unions that are upset with plans for a new carrier that could deplete their membership and questions over yesterday’s news of MAS sponsoring English football team Queens Park Rangers, owned by new company director Tan Sri Tony Fernandes.
Encik Mohammed Rashdan remains as the executive director reporting to the managing director.
Their first task is to speak to union leaders upset over talk that a number of union members will be asked to move to Sapphire, the new brand that will take over the narrow-body aircraft assets such as the Boeing 737-800 belonging to MAS and Firefly.
Sapphire is planned to start in November as a premium short-haul carrier against Fernandes’ AirAsia budget airline. Firely, MAS’s community airline, will stop using the Boeing jets from September 15 and instead focus on turbo-prop operations within the Malay peninsula from its Subang Skypark base.
Union sources told The Malaysian Insider that their experience showed that MAS staff will receive incentives to move to the new airline brands but will lose long-term perks. “This is a form of union-busting,” the source said, echoing MAS Employees’ Union (Maseu) president Alias Aziz’s statement last week.
Ahmad Jauhari is expected to work with Fernandes in marketing MAS as a premium international airline for better yields although the QPR sponsorship could also raise a stink as the national carrier is not expected to make a profit this year.
“MAS needs to make money with better planes and service, not more publicity from sponsoring football kits,” an airline source said, adding Ahmad Jauhari will have to find competent marketing experts to fill the seats on the fleet, which is to include the world’s biggest passenger jet, the Airbus A380, from next year.
MAS is also hoping to be a full member of the oneworld alliance within 18 months and benefit from the airline grouping’s marketing and network reach.
