Khazanah's portfolio makes for a very interesting read, but probably not for the reasons you are thinking. Yes, the markets have been bad. It would have been a very cheap shot to snap a portfolio's performance at ONE specific date and try to "shame" the managers. That is not my intent and I don't think Star Biz wanted to do that at all.
a) Performance - It is in line with the rout in global equity markets, more so for emerging or developing markets. The trade war exacerbated the situation.
b) Key Holdings - Mind you, these are key holdings, or substantive holdings of the said company, hence it is not like you can trade in and out easily.
c) Blame - Well, even in a rout you have losers and real outsized losers. Could Khazanah have known or impacted on those companies. We are talking about Axiata, Telekom and Astro in particular? They could only make their input at board level. Failing which, they could have initiated a replacement of the CEO with someone with a better strategy and execution ability to navigate the changing landscape or difficulties within operations. On that level, yes, some blame could be attributed to Khazanah.
d) In Line - The rest, the losses were understandable and in line. Even UEM Sunrise would have a down trodden property market to help explain its performance.
e) Crowding Out Effect - Curiously, the best lesson to be learned from the table is the crowding out effect, or lack of rather. I used to hammer home the point that the big danger for Malaysian equity market is that local funds are getting much too much funds flow, and together they keep holding an increasingly larger and larger slice of the ownership of key index component stocks.
The follow on thesis is that at a very substantive level, the local funds may be able to "control" prices of selected stocks which would then give an unfair picture of the true worth of their holdings. If retailers and foreigners keep selling, and local funds keep buying, technically prices wouldn't change. But the table above showed clearly that NONE of that is happening - which is a good thing.
In my view, too often the CEOs of GLC linked firms are given too wide a berth to manage the companies. Are they mere messengers to comply or are they active agents for change and improvements? The hiring and firing must be swifter. You dilly-dally you get FGV.
On that note, EPF has a brewing problem at RHB Bank. The rapid departure of many key staff did not happen just the last few months. You can trace it back as far as two years but NOTHING changed. As a cursory member of the financial industry, one can see that there are huge problems at RHB. Anecdotal hearsay: too many decisions done by committees, HR is the most powerful department there (not in a good way), the old guard act like gatekeepers and not many are keen to stick their necks out for taking on more risks. Only now we are talking about changing CEO. In my view, not just the CEO but probably another 10 top people there needed to go as well.
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