ada apa dengan CIMB?

If you own RM1,750 of CIMB shares in 2002, your shares are now worth RM9,000.

Not a bad return, a whopping 514%, for an investment of 5 years.

In a short span of half a decade, CIMB's achievement is nothing short of phenomenal.

Within that period, it has transformed itself into a totally different animal.

If 5 years ago, it was just a merchant bank, today, CIMB is a full fledged bank, after acquiring stakes in Bumiputera Commerce Bank and Southern Bank.

Within half a decade, it has expanded its operations outside Malaysia, with stakes in financial institutions in Indonesia, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Gone were the days, when, the name Bank Bumiputera (the precursor of CIMB Bank) was associated with inefficiency and incompetency.

Till today, Bank Bumiputera, holds the record of being the only financial institution to be rescued by the Government, not only once or twice - but thrice.

The first was in 1984, when the national petroleum corporation, PETRONAS injected RM3.3 billion into the bank, to prevent it from collapsing.

The second rescue was in 1988, also by PETRONAS, when bad loans provisions nearly wiped out the bank's capital.

Again in 1997/98, at the height of the Asian Financial Crisis, some RM11 billion of the bank's bank debts were taken over by Danaharta, a Government agency formed by the Government at teh height of the crisis, to rehabilitate the financial sector's non performing loans.

A product of the first Kongress Ekonomi Bumiputera, Bank Bumiputera Malaysia Berhad was formed in 1965 to expand the coutry's ethnic Malays' (or Bumiputera) participation in the economy.

At the time, most of the banks in the country, were owned by the British or the Chinese, and hence were perceived to be reluctant in extending loans to the Bumiputera.

With an initial capital of RM10 million, Bank Bumiputera opened for business in September 1965.

Within five years of opening shop, Bank Bumiputera managed to collect deposit of RM340 million and given out loans totalling RM181 million.

The bank made a profit of RM710,000.

Commenting on this achievement, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, the Chairman of the bank, said:

"Bagi saya membina modal tenaga yakni, tenaga Bumiputera, adalah lebih penting daripada membina keuntungan"

In the next one decade, Bank Bumiputera, became of the leading banks in the country.

It expanded overseas, by opening branches in London, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore.

However, by then, mismanagement, greed and hubris began to crept, and in 1982, the Malaysian Cabinet was informed of a huge loans given by a subsidiary of the bank - Bumiputera Finance Ltd. (BMFL) to the Carrian Group, a Hong Kong based property company.

The collapse of Carrian in 1982, was the straw that broke the camel's back, and saw the beginning of the end of two Bumiputera icons - Bank Bumiputera Malaysia Berhad and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.