In it’s prospectus of March 12, 1984, Maika Holdings Berhad said it wanted to pool the resources of Malaysian Indian and Ceylonese investors into a solid base to enable the community to participate substantially in the country’s economic expansion. Lagging behind in all areas and desiring a better future, the community bought into the electrifying sales talk of MIC president Datuk Seri S Samy Vellu who criss–crossed the country with his men to get the Indians excited.
The deluge, however was totally unexpected. Maika’s public issue of 50 million shares of RM 1 each at par was oversubscribed, forcing MIC officials to apply to raise the paid up capital to RM 100 million. When the extended date for share applications closed, a total of 66,459 investors had put in RM 106.21 million. About 80 per cent of the investors held fewer than 6,500 shares each, indicating that the lower – and middle – income earners had answered Samy Vellu’s call. In fact, thousands used their life savings, pawned their jewellery or took out loans to give Maika a sound start.
PNB shares skyrocketed by 38,200% from a mere RM 200 million in 1981 to RM 76 billion in 2008 because they were given prime land, shares in blue chip companies and prime contracts.
The UMNO led Malay-sian government bailed out (Chinese) Multi Purpose Holdings, 24 Deposit Taking cooperatives, (and Malay) Bank Rakyat, Bank Bumiputera, BMF Finance, Perwaja Steel, etc but refused to bail out Maika Holdings, even the from billions granted to Valuecap to buy up “undervalued” shares.
UMNO has no intentions of wiping out the tears of these 66,459 Indians and hundreds of thousands of their family members.
P. Uthayakumar
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