Jakarta office to make Malaysian company more global, says Fernandes *new!

AirAsia Group CEO Tan Sri Tony Fernandes says the opening of the AirAsia Asean office as its regional base today is in the right direction to make a

Malaysian company more global.

He said Malaysian companies have been told by Malaysian leaders to globalise and to grow into bigger companies and not be parochial.

“So I am here to make a Malaysian company more global, it’s the mandate of our leaders to ask us to do and we are doing that,” he told Malaysian

journalists and from several other countries after the opening of the AirAsia Asean office here.

Fernandes described the decision to open up the Jakarta office as a brave and an emotional one.

“We’ve set a great base, we’re planning ahead by a brave descision and an emotional decision to pull myself out of Malaysia and to base myself in a

country I’ve never lived in because I think it’s the right move to take a Malaysian company to the next stage,” he said.

Stressing that while AirAsia’s headquarters remained in Malaysia, the company’s regional base in Jakarta would function as a strategic “think house” and

a “centralised think tank” for AirAsia to plan for its future.

Fernandes said AirAsia wanted to grow in every country and not to shrink in any country and would continue to look at ways of growing markets and not

shrinking markets.

At the moment, the focus would be the Asean market, with the 680 million population, and Asia as a bigger region because there was much more growth in this

part of the region than in Europe.

When AirAsia X withdrew from Europe, he said, the company has become more profitable.

Fernandes said the Jakarta office would provide him with more time with his team of 20 staff to plan for the company’s future. “I can sit here with a very

clear mind and strategicly plan as opposed to spending a lot of time fighting with the Malaysia Airports last time or worrying about a delay or dealing with

things that are now dealt much better by my CEO in Malaysia and gives me a bigger opportunity to look at a bigger picture,” he added.

The opening of the Jakarta office on the eve of the Asean Day was a deliberate one to reaffirm its commitment to the Asean region and strengthen its position

as an Asean airline. –Bernama