Malaysia has a marketing problem: it always has. We’re great builders of companies and people but the world unfortunately only sees Malaysia as a nation of philanderers.
Take Bursa Malaysia for example.
We have tons of great companies with promising long-term businesses, but many suffer from poor valuations and nonexistent public awareness.
Worse, the younger generations after mine (X, in case you were wondering), have been lured elsewhere by faster returns in areas like crypto.
What the kids don’t realise is that the vast, vast majority of crypto is going to zero: probably a ratio around the 99.9% mark. Less than ten crypto projects of the 17,000 or so projects will likely stand the test of time.
Whereas on Bursa Malaysia, every single company that goes public has not only been profitable for years but vetted to the nth degree in every single aspect of its business by a team of eagle-eyed IPO advisers.
This IPO Due Diligence Working Group (DDWG) comprises reps from the offeror company, principal adviser (usually an investment bank), lawyers, reporting accountants, independent market researcher, investor relations firm, company secretary and internal risk and control consultants who pore over every single item in the prospectus to ensure every single word and number has been fact-checked and verified.
This team quite literally spends up to two or even in some cases three years to ensure the company going for listing is shipshape and safe for investing in by investors.
It’s an arduous, stressful and exhausting task.
In many cases (a failure rate of perhaps as high as 20%-30%), the applicant company doesn’t make it to PLC status, because they couldn’t meet the stringent requirements needed to become a public company.
Hence ‘Beyond The Prospectus’ is a series between Do More and Aurum (whose founder Stephanie Ng was also once a member of the DDWG as an Independent Market Researcher) that seeks to inform the investing public of the rigors that companies undertake to go public.
It is a pain threshold so high that many don’t succeed, but by and large safeguards the mom and pop investor like you and me and so many others of our life savings.
The first episode, headlined by M&A Securities head of corporate finance Gary Ting, is the first of eight episodes that goes behind the prospectus and shares the war stories, the background yarns, the pain and pleasures of the lengths that the DDWG go to ensure that your money is safe.
Required viewing by investors, companies, finance students, regulators and market participants for the factoids and stories proffered by our guests who so graciously and generously gave of their time and effort: thank you.
Happy Tuesdays all.
Carpe Diem.
