I read Tong Kooi Ong’s column in The Edge and one sentence kept ringing in my head long after I closed the tab.
The criticism was aimed at companies that go public not to build, not to expand, not to create long-term value but to cash out.
A thinly-veiled jab? Most readers can connect the dots themselves. The market is not stupid. The rakyat is not stupid. Sometimes we pretend not to see the elephant in the room because the elephant happens to wear a tailored suit and arrives in a German car.
But here’s the question that really bothers me as a journalist and as a young Malaysian:
Who enables this culture?
Because founders cannot IPO themselves.
Someone has to approve the listing. Someone has to package the story. Someone has to market the dream. Someone has to stamp the documents and tell the public, “Yes, this is suitable for the market.”
And that is where the conversation gets uncomfortable.
In the case of 1 Doc, the lead manager is Maybank Investment Bank. That is not a small detail tucked away in the appendix. That is the central fact. The Edge, through reporting by Adeline Raj, laid out the structure of the listing and the role of the lead manager in bringing the company to market.
Bak kata orang tua, “kalau tiada angin, masakan pokok bergoyang.” When a major financial institution puts its name behind a listing, investors naturally assume a certain level of scrutiny, due diligence and professional judgment has taken place.
That is the entire point of having a lead manager.
Otherwise what are investors paying for? A glossy prospectus? A roadshow with nice slides and free coffee?
And then we come to the regulators.
Bursa Malaysia. The Securities Commission (SC).
These are not bystanders watching from the balcony. They are the gatekeepers of the capital market. They decide who gets through the door.
So when The Edge one of the country’s most established financial publications publishes a column questioning the very purpose of certain IPOs, a fair question follows:
Have Bursa and the SC responded? Have they addressed the substance of the criticism?
Or are we getting the familiar Malaysian special: silence.
Not ordinary silence. The kind of silence that arrives wearing cufflinks. The kind that says, “We are too important to answer.” In Malay, we have a word for that attitude: bodohsombong.
It is a harsh word, I know. But sometimes the harshest words survive because they capture a feeling the public already understands.
What frustrates me is that this is not a call for a witch hunt. I am not saying every IPO is bad. I am not saying every founder is trying to run away with the money.
I am saying something much simpler:
If the media raises credible questions about a listing, regulators should respond with facts, not silence.
That is basic professionalism.
And honestly, the line that keeps echoing in my head is the infamous bureaucratic defence: “You want me to go to jail?”
Alamak. Since when did answering legitimate public questions become a criminal offence?
Journalists ask questions. Regulators answer questions. That is how trust is built.
Investors are not donating money to charity. They are investing their savings, their retirement funds, their children’s education money, and in many cases, their clients’ money.
They have a right to full, timely and meaningful information before they part with a single ringgit.
What we do not need is another after-the-fact national shrug.
We already saw the country go through the RM160 million KWAP-linked scandal, where the Prime Minister remarked that “we cannot always trust the auditors.”
Think about that for a second. If confidence in auditors can be shaken after a major scandal, what happens if investors one day start saying:
“We cannot always trust the regulators and the lead managers either.”
And honestly?
I have a feeling we may already be closer to that cliff than many people realise.
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