When Dato Sri Shazalli left Celcom last year, people in the industry were betting on his return, or even to a ministerial post in the government. That’s how highly this man is regarded among his peers. Of course eventually he was seconded to parent company Axiata as Regional CEO and Corporate Executive Vice President coming of the back of achieving a staggering 31 quarters of consecutive revenue as Chief Officer at Celcom.
After warming the seats at Axiata for less than a year, the maverick who oversaw Celcoms rise is back to helm the largest telecommunication company in Malaysia with a market cap of 23 billion ringgit, Telekom Malaysia. This is of course monumental, TM is also part of the government linked company that has been performing well and with Shazalli transiting over just as when the GLC is readying itself to enter the mobile sector with Webe, the timing could not be better. Shazalli has proven himself at Celcom, taking the beleaguered cellular provider despite having the most extensive network at that time and playing second fiddle to Maxis, to be a formidable telco company with structure, competitive attitude and new products.
The TM ship is also at the cusp of major transformation, steering itself from a pure fixed line play to various other aspects, HyppTV on content and IPTV, second phase of HSBB roll-out, and the need to get their recently acquired wireless business up and running…fast! A veteran, Shazalli is more than capable for the task, having experienced managing a terrestrial TV station we could finally get to see some real competition to Astro with HyppTv playing a contender role, on the wholesale business, his private sector tenure can be of great use and most of all his marketing skill will come in handy in structuring the plethora of products under TM, giving them purpose or just dropping them all together.
Nevertheless we will see changes in TM in coming months, will Shazalli bring his trusted generals from Celcom over? We will have to wait and see, however we can attest to Tan Sri Zam’s amazing job at the company and has had his key personals in management level playing a vital role in turning TM to a performance driven company, not an easy job to change the mindset of 28,000 staff.
The good work will continue, kudos to the board in bringing someone who is familiar with the task ahead without rocking the boat. PC.com CEO of the year winner, Dato’ Sri Shazalli is back, and all of a sudden a sense of excitement is in the air especially in the telco sector that’s not been seeing good days of late. We suspect he will be seriously working on Webe, the ambition from what we hear from internal sources, is for the wireless provider becoming number 1 in a few years time.
