Axiata president and group CEO Tan Sri Jamaludin Ibrahim said the group had achieved a few significant milestones to record strong double digit growth on all key financial indicators.
KUALA LUMPUR: Axiata Group Bhd
’s president and chief executive officer Tan Sri Jamaludin Ibrahim said there will be no forced layoffs from a potential merger with Telenor ASA.
“There will be no retrenchments but of course for a couple of positions there cannot be two people doing the same position. For example we can’t have two chief financial officers or two chief marketing officers,” Jamaludin said.
“In cases like this, we can offer a voluntary separation scheme. This is only voluntary and not a forced offer. We can also give the person affected a different job or let him be the new (department’s) deputy or we might have opportunities in our group’s other locations that he or she can be relocated to,” he added.
He said that given the competitive nature of the industry now, that it would be better for a merger to happen and for the industry to handle issues pertaining to jobs from a position of strength.
“Otherwise such as in Europe in 2016 there were 107,000 jobs lost because of pressure from the industry. The beauty of this is that by gaining strength, balance sheets and profitability, we do not have to do anything by force as I have the luxury to offer people voluntary (separation scheme). Assuming we don’t do this, I think we will still do very well but we wouldn’t know how in five years,” he said.
