The agency reported that the building, located in Norodom Boulevard, the main commercial street in Phnom Penh, will house the entire operations of Maybank (Cambodia) Plc as well as the main branch.

Chairman Tan Sri Megat Zaharuddin Megat Mohd Nor was quoted as saying that the new corporate office was also part of Maybank’s strategy in expanding its regional footprint to become a leading banking group in Asia.

“We believe that our efforts in evolving the nation’s financial industry and economy are in line with theAsean Economic Community’s (AEC) initiative to promote competitiveness and economic development,” he said in a statement.

Maybank in Cambodia was established in December 1993 with the opening of its first branch in Phnom Penh.

It was locally incorporated in Cambodia in 2012 as part of its commitment to strengthen its presence in the country.

Mitsui & Co Ltd entered into an agreement with Behn Meyer to form a joint-venture company, BMM Venture, registered in Singapore. Mitsui will hold a 49-per-cent equity stake.

BMM Venture will then establish Agri First Co Ltd, in collaboration with MAPCO, to manufacture and distribute fertilisers in Myanmar. BMM Venture will hold 60 per cent in Agri First while MAPCO would hold the rest.

The factory’s annual capacity is 100,000 tonnes. It aims to commence production in May 2017. Myanmar’s fertiliser demand is just over one million tonnes a year.

Agri First hopes to combine Behn Meyer’s expertise and experience in fertiliser manufacturing, MAPCO’s distribution network and Mitsui’s financing, logistics, procurement and marketing capabilities.

Under a 20-year foreign-investment promotion plan, US$6 billion (Bt210 billion) is projected to enter Myanmar in the financial year that will end this month, according to the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration.

Aung Naing Oo, secretary of the Myanmar Investment Commission (MIC), said recently that more investment was expected to enter the country under the new National League for Democracy government.

He said the economy had excellent potential.

“The incoming government is politically strong as it is elected by the people in accordance with their desires. There is great potential for domestic and foreign businesses in the country,” he said.

In this fiscal year, most foreign investment went into the oil and natural-gas sector with 39 per cent, with telecommunications coming second with 30 per cent.

The industrial sector received 16 per cent of total foreign investment.

Throughout the period of the Thein Sein administration, the oil and gas sector received $5.8 billion and the industrial sector $4.7 billion, according to the MIC. The telecommunications sector received $3.7 billion.

“Everyone expects the incoming civilian government to be more transparent. And everyone welcomes this change. If there are excellent working conditions for companies, everyone will work harder,” said country manager Min Tala Nyan of Ball, a US company based in the Thilawa Special Economic Zone.

Sources told StarBiz that Pakistan Mobile Communications Ltd, better known as Mobilink, has submitted a proposal to sell and lease back its signal towers to edotco Group Sdn Bhd, Axiata’s tower services arm.

An announcement on the deal that potentially could involve up to 9,000 towers is expected to be made later next month.

edotco operates 12,000 km of fibre optic network in Pakistan and analysts consider the company as one of two to be in the running for a signal-tower deal, the other being Towershare, a Dubai-based tower operator. According to reports, Mo billionink, which recently merged with Warid Telecom (Pte) Ltd, has a customer base of 45 millionlion.

The latest tower deal involved Warid, which sold 4,500 towers to Towershare last April. Analysts see more telecommunication infrastructure deals following the rollout of 3G and 4G broadband services in Pakistan from April 2014. According to reports, Pakistan has an estimated 28,000 signal towers.

Axiata, through edotco, would be looking to not only buy over Mo billionink’s signal towers but also build more than 1,000 towers in the northern and southern regions of Pakistan over the next three years with an investment of more than RM400 million.

A source said negotiations were ongoing, with edotco likely to invest an initial RM20 million in the venture. The company was awarded a tower licence last year.

The source said the plan would be to buy Mobilink’s signal towers and then have the company lease these towers from edotco for a period of 10 to 15 years. The source said edotco would benefit from this deal, with the return on investments to be within a six-year period.

When contacted, Axiata said the company has had operations in Pakistan since 2005, managing the fibre-optic network. The company said edotco “is in the process of establishing a subsidiary in Pakistan”.

“All relevant announcements on this matter are publicly available,” it said and that no further announcements would be made with regard to the matter.

RHB Research Institute analyst Jeffrey Tan views the potential deal positively as there would be stable income from the leaseback. “Having already invested in Pakistan, edotco would be more tolerable to local dynamics in terms of regulatory settings,” he said, adding that in the past, edotco had faced challenges in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

“The company would be more fa millioniar with the region now,” Tan pointed out.

Another analyst said the company’s familiarity with Pakistan and its regulations would ensure that its interests would be protected, in a region that has known political insta billionity in recent years.

Malaysian High Commissioner to Pakistan Datuk Dr Hasrul Sani Mujatabar said in an interview that the potential deal reflected renewed confidence of Malaysian investors in the country, which had been racked by a series of terrorist attacks in the past.

“Things have changed for the better today and Malaysian companies should seize every opportunity to invest here again,” he said.

Axiata bought a 75 per cent stake in Digicel Myanmar Tower Co Ltd for US$221 million last October from Digicel Group Ltd as part of the strategy to become a major telecommunications infrastructure operator in South and South-East Asia. The company also recently drew down from its US$1.5 billion multicurrency sukuk, intending to use the proceeds for merger and acquisition activities and general corporate purposes.

Besides Axiata, other notable Malaysian companies that have invested in Pakistan include Tenaga Nasional Bhd for power plants and Bandar Raya Developments Bhd in property development.

In February, Axiata, which posted its highest ever revenue of nearly RM20 billion in the financial year ended Dec 31, 2015 secured its shareholders’ approval to acquire an 80 per cent stake in Nepal’s number one mo billione operator, Ncell Pte Ltd, for US$1.365 billion (RM5.67 billion).

Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) chairman Franky Sibarani said the Lille-based company, the name of which was not disclosed, had conveyed its interest through BKPM’s representative in London.

Franky added the French company would cooperate with local companies to build a sports research and development center, an integrated department store as well as an import-export system in Indonesia.

“Not only will the company market its products domestically, it will also export to other department stores overseas,” Franky said in an official statement on Friday.

France is seen by BKPM as one of the top prospects from where to source more investment. The latest plan would see a huge increase from that country, which last year contributed only Rp 123 billion to foreign investment.

Other EU countries — which are particularly interested in investing in minerals, infrastructure and manufacturing – also displayed growing interest this past year. According to BKPM data, investment commitments from Europe totaled Rp 37.3 trillion in 2015, up 16 percent from 2014’s Rp 32.2 trillion. The biggest commitment was from the UK with Rp 9.19 trillion — up 338 percent from 2014.

Based on this trend, Franky expressed hope for solid growth. “We will gradually increase investment from Europe in five years.”

He said his office would maintain communication with the investors to ensure the proposed projects would be realized.

“Our representative in London and marketing officers all over Europe will directly communicate all the facilities [the investors] would get when investing in Indonesia,” Franky said.

Meanwhile, BKPM’s investment promotion representative in London, Nurul Ichwan, said the French investor was a big name in sports, with 1,030 department stores worldwide. “It expects to operate its first department stores in Malaysia and Indonesia this year,” he said.

In October 2015, the BKPM launched a three-hour licensing service for certain investors planning to open businesses in a bid to attract large-scale investment. The service, which is part of the government’s second economic policy package, will allow prospective investors with a minimum investment of Rp 100 billion (US$7.33 million) and/or a plan to employ more than 1,000 workers to have their preliminary permits processed at the BKPM’s one-stop integrated service (PTSP) within three hours.

Recently, the BKPM has set itself a target to attract more investors from Europe, primarily from major countries like the UK, Germany, Netherlands, France, Spain and Switzerland.

Ayala group head of strategy and development Paolo Borromeo said it was possible that Ayala could finally establish a footprint in Indonesia this year.

“There’s a lot of relationships historically that we’ve had there, so we’ll look at it for water, power (and) for real estate where we believe we can add value,” Borromeo said, adding that the group had an existing business development team in Indonesia and also in Myanmar.

Elsewhere in the region, the group has existing offshore investments in Vietnam (water) and Malaysia (real estate).

In 2013, Ayala-led Manila Water Co. (MWC) planned to buy out the 51-percent stake held by French-controlled Suez Environment in PAM Lyonnase Jaya (Palyja), one of the two water utility operators in Jakarta, but the plan was foiled as the local government decided not to cede its stake to a foreign investor.

In Vietnam, MWC was contracted in the mid-2000s to plug pipeline leakages and has since found opportunity to invest in a couple of water treatment plants and water distribution. MWC has now invested $100 million in Vietnam, making it the biggest foreign direct investor in that country’s water space.

MWC likewise has a joint project with Mitsubishi Corp. of Japan and the Yangon City Development Council on a nonrevenue reduction program in Myanmar.

Property arm Ayala Land Inc., on the other hand, entered into a partnership with Myanmar’s City Mart Holdings, the leading local retailer there, to gain access to this new frontier market.

“Right now, it’s on hold because government approvals are hard to get,” Borromeo said, also pointing out to political changes in Myanmar.

During last year’s parliamentary elections, democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi‘s party won by a landslide in Myanmar, a country transitioning from over 50 years of military rule. But as the parliament now begins it presidential selection, Suu Kyi has been constitutionally barred from the presidency because she married a British citizen and her sons are British.

The search for investments in Indonesia is opportunistic, Borromeo said. “We want to diversify our portfolio,” he pointed out, adding that the group would enter this new market with a local partner.

Restrictions in finance and governance force domestic banks to look for support from foreign partners to help them grow rapidly in the context of rising competition from the country’s integration into the world market.

The Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV), for example, early last year planned to find foreign strategic partners, selling a 15 per cent stake to a foreign strategic partner and 10 per cent to a foreign financial investor. However, it failed in its search.

Another example is Military Bank. After failing to find suitable foreign strategic partners for a long time, the bank recently had to change its plans, and decided to increase stakes for foreign investors from 10 per cent to 20 per cent through an additional share issue.

The same trend was seen with VP Bank after its strategic partner – the Singapore-based Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation Limited (OCBC) – withdrew its capital from late 2013. Finding no foreign strategic partners, VP Bank had to ask its shareholders in October 2015 to approve a plan to issue a number of shares, equal to 20 per cent of the bank’s capital, to overseas investors in order to raise capital to serve the bank’s core businesses.

Under the current regulations, cap on foreign holdings in a Vietnamese bank is set at 30 per cent. According to experts, the rule makes investment into domestic banks less attractive as foreign investors with low stakes have no say in the decision making process in such banks.

Besides, experts said, foreign investors are also mulling other options such as setting up independent operations rather than teaming up with local institutions such as in the case of ANZ. After divesting from Sacombank, ANZ scaled up its presence as a wholly foreign-owned bank in Viet Nam.

However, to attract foreign strategic partners, experts also recommended to domestic banks that they improve their transparency.

Deputy Director of the Central Institution for Economic Management Võ Trí Thành said that the transparency was a key factor in attracting foreign partners. Transparency must exist at all levels and banks must commit to it, both, in their reporting and operations, he said.

Wedding planners catering to Malay marriages told The Sunday Times that about 30 per cent of their clients are now having their weddings at community clubs, country clubs or function halls.

It was less than 10 per cent five years ago.

Amani Weddings, which has been in business since 2004, said it handles about 15 Malay weddings a month. Of these 15, four are now held at private venues, instead of just one in 2011. Wedding & Romance, founded in 2005, said almost half of their Malay clients are hosting their wedding receptions at community clubs now.

The cost of renting a hall at a community club or country club is about S$3,000 (US$2,185), compared to S$100 for a Housing Board void deck, wedding planners estimated.

Farhana Mohd Yunos, 32, and Raizan Rosli, 33, held their wedding reception at Ulu Pandan Community Club on Jan 17. The couple said they were willing to spend more for an air-conditioned venue.

“We wanted somewhere that is comfortable for our guests as well,” said Farhana, who is a teacher.

Raizan, a golf operations manager, said: “We live in Clementi and the void deck at our area isn’t the most ideal. The space is limited, and there are obstructions like fixed tables and chairs.”

The couple, who had planned their wedding for more than a year, said many Malay couples now want more options for their wedding, including the choice of venue.

They said that from about three years ago, they started receiving invitations to wedding celebrations at venues such as HortPark or Changi Yacht Club.

The advantage of having weddings at void decks is that these can accommodate about 1,000 people.

But Nur’Adila, sales manager at Amani Weddings, said couples increasingly prefer private venues, and keep guests to close relatives and friends. “In the past, the idea was to invite as many as you can – even friends that you see only once or twice. But now, indoor venues are getting popular as they offer something private and exclusive.”

Wedding planners also pointed to rising affluence. Roslina Juri, 44, a wedding planner at Wedding & Romance, said: “We’ve noticed Malay couples delaying their marriage because of education and work. In the past, some of our clients were in their 20s. Now, it’s rare to find a groom who is 25 or younger.”

The figure will be larger than its total investment of $400 million in the country over the past 20 years.

The CJ Group will increase investment in agriculture through mergers and acquisitions and basic investment in the value chain this year.

Chang Bok Sang, the group’s chairman and general director, said on Thursday that the firm had bought four per cent of VISSAN’s shares.

Agriculture has been the group’s strength, with about half of its investment in Vietnam being in the sector. The CJ Group aims to invest heavily in Vietnam by 2020, its second largest investment after China.

It was not just the pride of La Sarita – his 35-horse polo team – clinching the trophy that brought such satisfaction to the 56-year-old businessman, but also the methodical way the players built up to the match-winning moment.

“That is why polo is such an interesting sport. To win, everything has to come together. You will need the preparation, the hard work, the right teammates and a cool head. Exactly like doing business,” Jumabhoy told The Straits Times after the match in January at the Thai Polo Club in Pattaya.

Jumabhoy, who won a polo silver medal for Singapore at the Southeast Asian Games in 2007, knows what it takes to be a winner, both in sports and in dealmaking.

And while his name may evoke memories of the once-powerful Jumabhoy clan behind Scotts Holdings – one of Singapore’s early property giants with assets that included a shopping centre and serviced residence – he has been very much his own man for the past 20 years as he hunted his own success.

That journey hit another milestone last November, when the Scotts Group, an investment and holding firm founded and managed by Jumabhoy, sold its minority stake in Fintrax Group, alongside majority owner Exponent Private Equity, for 585 million euros (US$653.18 million).

Jumabhoy had been Fintrax’s vice-chairman since September 2013 after Exponent partnered him to acquire the firm, which is headquartered in Ireland and provides travellers with value-added tax refund services.

He relished seeing Fintrax grow its company value by 250 per cent in two years to become a leading player, with operations in 30 countries and an annual revenue growth of 20 per cent. But, like in polo, building a successful business is never a one-man show, he stresses.

“I was fortunate to be part of a team that helped build the finance, the marketing and the management structure of a raw asset, so that it could grow further as a global business. If there is one thing I brought, it was the experience in knowing what strategies make such a business tick and how to execute them.”

He has that experience in ample supply. After leaving the family business Scotts Holdings in 1996, Jumabhoy founded Asia Tax Free Shopping, a fledgling goods and services tax refund platform, as he detected the emergence of digitisation in the transaction process.

The venture also took him back to his interest in technology, despite his focus on property development during his stint at Scotts Holdings.

“I have always loved tinkering with technology. When I was in college, I spent my summer break installing computers in offices. I can even write a (computer) program,” said Jumabhoy, who has a degree in mathematics.

Asia Tax Free Shopping quickly grew and drew the interest of Apax Partners in Britain. A 150 million euros merger soon followed, creating Global Refund in 1999.

One of his key projects was the creation of Global Refund’s dynamic currency-conversion system, which allows consumers to pay in their home currency with credit cards when abroad.

In 2007, Barclays Private Equity acquired Global Refund for 350 million euros and renamed it Global Blue in 2010. Jumabhoy stayed with Global Blue as its non-executive director until 2012, when private equity firm Silver Lake bought it for around 1 billion euros.

Add in the Fintrax transactions and he has had his hands on deals amounting to around 2.3 billion euros

His achievements in building cross-border financial and technology services did not go unnoticed, despite his habit of keeping a low profile. In 2012, he was named the chairman of IDA International, an Infocomm Development Authority subsidiary that promotes Singapore companies eyeing overseas growth in the infocomm industry.

In the coming weeks, Jumabhoy will announce his next big fintech venture. Details are still under wraps, but it will retain a focus on merchants using payment cards.

As he embarks on the next stage of his career, Jumabhoy keeps the focus of his life on his wife and four children.

“When I left Scotts Holdings, I did not have a dime with me, and I would not be here without my wife, who lent me S$250,000 (US$182,068) to start from scratch. That is why, at the end of the day, my family remains the most important thing in my life.”

But the Jumabhoy family also has a very different meaning to Singaporeans. Years of family feuds – including the much-publicised conflict between Jumabhoy’s brothers, Iqbal and Rafiq, over business control – had greatly weakened Scotts Holdings by the late 1990s, allowing CapitaLand to take over the group that included serviced residence pioneer Ascott International.

The fall of the Jumabhoys is now ingrained in Singapore’s business lore and continues to draw public attention that the family actively shun.

Jumabhoy, who worked for Scotts Holdings for 10 years but was not openly involved in any of the drama, refused to share details on the matter.

Moreover, he noted, the Jumabhoys have moved on. “In January, my father held his 90th birthday dinner, and all of us – including Iqbal and Rafiq – were there. Of course, we are still on speaking terms. If we keep looking back, we will only trip and fall.”

That his family members all went their own ways to seek their fortune may be for the best, he added.

“I don’t feel sorry or regret for the Jumabhoy family. Just as I left to create my own business, who is to say our children cannot go out, make their own mark, amass an even bigger fortune and, more importantly, have a meaningful life?”

(US$1 = 0.90 euro)

Malaysians have not only been exposed to the use of technology in banking, but are also increasingly using the digital world in their banking transactions. From the automated teller machine (ATM) where cash is withdrawn and banking services conducted, people are using computers and mobile phones to make transactions that are increasing at a fast pace.

Bank Negara has been one of the co-drivers of that change along with the financial institutions. Heading the central bank’s push in the adoption of e-payments is deputy governor Muhammad Ibrahim, a career central banker at Bank Negara.

“If you do not adopt technology, you will be left behind. You must not put constrains on it. The necessary framework must be in place,” says Muhammad.

The push to use technology has had a tangible impact on consumers and financial institutions. Customers in the comfort of their own homes no longer, for nearly most of their banking needs, have to drive to a branch to conduct a transaction.

For the banks, the use of technology means better efficiency and productivity. And taken together, it has led to savings for both consumers and banks.

Bank Negara says that banks can derive cost savings by promoting the use of e-payments over cheques and cash. In an industry where money flow generates income, there is always a cost of executing a transaction and banks incur a cost of RM2.4bil annually to process cash and cheques.

It costs RM3 to process a cheque compared with 20 to 50 sen for an interbank transaction.

The usage of technology has seen banks save RM231mil in cheque-processing costs from 2013 to 2015 and as of the end of last year, the public has saved RM611mil from the reduction in interbank giro fees.

For years, Bank Negara has been pushing for companies and individuals to reduce the use of cheques. Given the high cost of executing a cheque transaction, it is understandable why that initiative was given prominence.

But it is technology that has allowed that transition to take place and at the end of last year, interbank giro transactions surpassed the number of cheques for the first time in 2015.

“Having the banks adopt an increasing amount of e-payment methods will improve competitiveness and allow banks innovate, and this can help with new products and services that offer new value propositions and in the long run can reduce cost,” says Muhammad.

Technology has allowed individuals and businesses to migrate from cheques to e-payment and that has seen the usage of cheques decelerate significantly in recent years.

Between 2011 and 2013, cheque transactions fell 1.6 per cent but that rate of decline rose to 10 per cent in 2014. Last year, the number of cheques that changed hands fell 16 per cent.

Interbank giro transactions, on the other hand, rose 19 per cent between 2011 and 2013 and 34 per cent between 2014 and 2015.

The increase in interbank financial transfers has been even more impressive, rising 60 per cent since 2011 but 77 per cent in 2015.

What has helped fuel the usage of e-payments has not just been the wider reach of the Internet and broadband, but also the proliferation of smartphones. As technology has become more accessible to consumers, so has the use of e-payments.

It is not just the urban areas which have gained from the cost savings of e-payments.

Muhammad says the adoption of technology in rural areas has also sprouted, with people in the kampung now having access to banking where there might be no physical branches.

He says the appointment of 5,000 to 6,000 banking agents has seen to that rise. These agents are basically sole proprietors of small sundry shops or grocery shops who conduct banking transactions for people in their community.

These agents have seen a rise of between 20 per cent and 30 per cent in their income, but the money they make comes from their customers not having to travel to the nearest bank branch.

Migration to e-payments will mean that not only cost savings are shared between banks and their customers but also how banks operate.

The need for physical branches is still important, especially in rural areas, but the need for brick-and-mortar branches will decrease in time.

For banks, the employment mix will also evolve. Muhammad says technology may not necessarily mean fewer employees, but higher skilled workers to handle the increasing use of technology within financial institutions.

Not just online transactions

The use of online transactions is just one aspect of the push for e-payments by Bank Negara. It is also trying hard to displace cash usage via debit cards and progress towards that was slow in the initial years because of market distortions and structural issues.

But last year, the central bank implemented the payment card reform framework to mitigate escalation in cost and make debit card acceptance more affordable.

To support infrastructure enhancements and the expansion of point-of-sale terminals, the industry has committed to investing RM1.1bil between 2015 and 2020 and progress has been seen since. Bank Negara wants to see 800,000 point-of-sale terminals in use by 2020 and the cost of accepting payment cards started to moderate downwards and the number of point-of-sale terminals more than tripled from 5 per cent in 2014 to 18 per cent last year.

Debit card transactions recorded growth of 31 per cent last year and there are now 43 million ATM and debit cards in the country.

“Migration to e-payments is a bold reform and like any reform, it is a departure in the way we do things. But all stakeholders must gain from it, only then it can work,” says Muhammad.

“At the end of the day, people will appreciate the ease of doing business and the reduction in the cost of doing business.”

He says that e-payments is about giving people options. The use of credit cards was once blamed for the rise in bankruptcies, but how to handle the usage of cards in modern society has to be balanced through education and proper conditions like setting a minimum wage to be eligible for a credit card.

“We give people the option and it is that the consumer knows best,” says Muhammad on how people should handle financial responsibilities when it comes to e-payments.

“The consumer will know what is best for them. It is about informed decision-making.”

The rise of financial technology

Technology as a disrupter is well-documented and it is tangible in the financial world. A report yesterday said US$4.5bil was invested last year in financial start-ups in Asia and that was a four-fold increase from 2014.

Globally, investments in fintech (financial technology) last year was 60 per cent higher at US$19.1bil from 2014.

Muhammad is well aware that fintech is the future of business and like e-payments, is about the adoption of technology.

“The good thing about fintech is that it injects competition into the traditional financial services providers, including service providers,” he points out.

A prelude to fintech in Malaysia was the launch of the investment account platform by Islamic banks. In this model, borrowers would channel their proposal to that platform and the banks would pick the ones they could fund.

“It’s an innovative approach taken by the Islamic banks, but eventually it will be almost all banks. The intended borrower will go to this platform and their proposal will be accessed by the banks and rated by rating agencies. People will have a choice of financing it. This is only possible because of technology and this is the first of many that will come,” he says.

To harness the potential of fintech, regulations will likely need to be changed, which Muhammad says can easily be done. One caveat though: the protection of consumers will be of paramount importance for the central bank when it comes to fintech being rolled out for Malaysians.

“As far as financial services is concerned, we will adopt proportionate regulation proportionate to the risk. We want to balance innovation and safety for the consumer. The protection of consumer interest is extremely important to ensure there is a balance,” he says.

Muhammad says technology is here to stay and that there is no point fighting it.

“Technology is the way for us to be more competitive and innovative. What is important is for the regulator to set a framework so that fintech will operate in a safe, efficient and transparent manner,” he says.