KUALA LUMPUR: AirAsia Aviation Ltd has today appointed Tan Sri Jamaludin Ibrahim as independent non-executive chairman for the airline group entity to provide fresh perspectives and robust board leadership to support the strategic growth of the airline businesses.
The move is also part of Capital A Bhd, the holding company for the airline group's important strategic and organisational reforms as it continues its rapid development.
Capital A chief executive officer Tan Sri Tony Fernandes said Jamaludin's appointment would allow fresh ideas and be part of the group's evolution.
"Leadership comes with new ideas that are an exciting pivot for AirAsia after 20 years to bring in people from different industries, countries, and skillset to provide management support while instilling shareholders confidence," he said at a press conference today.
Jamaludin's vast experience and background would provide different and fresh perspectives in mentoring and guidance.
"We intend to build a gold standard corporate governance and discipline - to steer the group and to help work with the management in terms of strategy and guidance as we grow the business," he said.
Jamaludin emphasised the potential contribution for talent and digitisation development for the group.
"I have been working with Axiata in regional operations across ASEAN and South Asia.
"I believe this (experience) with my background of working and operating in other countries will help in areas such as digitisation new technology and information technology, talent development and consumer industry."
Meanwhile, AirAsia Aviation will be renamed to AirAsia Aviation Group Ltd, following the recent group holding name change from AirAsia Group to Capital A.
AirAsia Aviation Group chief executive officer Bo Lingam said the move signalled a strong new beginning for the airline group to support the rapid expansion of Capital A's portfolio companies.
"This is to facilitate strong projected growth in both airline and non-airline companies.
"AirAsia Aviation group now holds our existing airline investments and paves the way for new airline ventures to be formed in due course.
"We have recently established the AirAsia Consulting company tasked at reviewing new airline partnerships, franchise opportunities and providing airline consulting services to not only AirAsia airlines but also to other airlines," he added.
Capital A would consolidate all of its airline operations under one entity to expand the business within the larger ecosystem.
Under the new structure, AirAsia Aviation would oversee all airlines in Capital A and related international support functions, including AirAsia Consulting, shared corporate services division AirAsia SEA, the Santan food group, and the ground handling services joint venture business - GTR.
The formation of a new board of directors for AirAsia Aviation group comprised all independent directors (except the group chief executive officer), separate from the board of Capital A.
This provides a dedicated focus on the aviation businesses to support sustainable growth, including setting up new joint ventures in the future.
Fernandes said this is the perfect moment to revive Asean's tourist sector, referring to quarantine as 'no real utility' because testing has been mandatory for all international travellers.
However, he said testing should not overburden travellers.
Asked whether Capital A plans to delist from Bursa Malaysia, Fernandes said, "we are fine and in a good position. We have enough capital. There is a huge amount of accounting entries put in, which put us into negative shareholder and hope it doesn't affect credit."
Nevertheless, he said Capital A is optimistic about aviation recovery and hopeful the group to reach maximum aircraft utilisation by the fourth quarter this year, from the current 45 per cent of 200 aircraft.