TH Hotels to operate under new name Raia Hotel, staff absorbed

In a statement issued on Thursday, Urusharta Jamaah said the staff at the four hotels - TH Hotel Kota Kinabalu; TH Hotel Bayan Lepas; TH Hotel & Convention Centre Alor Setar; and TH Hotel & Convention Centre Kuala Terengganu – would be absorbed.

KUALA LUMPUR: Tabung Haji's four operating hotels, which were transferred to Urusharta Jamaah Sdn Bhd (UJ), will operate under a new name of Raia Hotel from April 1 and all the staff would be absorbed.

In a statement issued on Thursday, Urusharta Jamaah said the staff at the four hotels - TH Hotel Kota Kinabalu; TH Hotel Bayan Lepas; TH Hotel & Convention Centre Alor Setar; and TH Hotel & Convention Centre Kuala Terengganu – would be absorbed.

“Urusharta Jamaah has further approved funds to improve hotel facilities and service quality, ” it said.

The hotels were part of a mixture of listed equity holdings, 29 properties and one unlisted asset transferred from Lembaga Tabung Haji (LTH) to Urusharta Jamaah.

Urusharta Jamaah was set up to rescue LTH after the liabilities exceeded its assets following a review of its financial position. It is a unit of the MoF Inc.

As part of the plan to revitalise and improve the financial performance of the acquired assets, Urusharta Jamaah created a wholly owned subsidiary, UJ Property Management Sdn Bhd (UJPM) to assume the operations of the four hotels.

“This exercise will not involve redundancies at TH Hotel & Residence Sdn Bhd (THHR) as approximately 90% of its existing staff will be absorbed into UJPM, with the remaining 10% to be absorbed by THHR Kelana Jaya.

“Under the new management, the hotels will operate and remain shariah-compliant under the new name of Raia Hotel from April 1,2020, ” it said.

It also strongly denied all malicious and false allegations that the Ministry of Finance or that the Minister of Finance, Lim Guan Eng, had irresponsibly shut down the TH Hotels and subsequently dismissed the affected hotel staff.

Urusharta Jamaah also condemned all irresponsible and false allegations including various viral social media posts maligning the Minister of Finance, including one which carried a death threat.

“The Minister of Finance was not involved in the decision-making for the above restructuring exercise or any decision that pertains to Urusharta Jamaah. He did not even attend any meetings on any of the matters relating to Urusharta Jamaah, ” it said.

The management of Urusharta Jamaah and its assets are governed by the board of Urusharta Jamaah, which is chaired by Treasury Secretary-General Tan Sri Ahmad Badri Mohd Zahir.

All the board of directors, CEO Izad Sallehuddin, and the senior management of Urusharta Jamaah are Muslim professionals, It added.

“With this rescue package to protect the interest of LTH contributors and to help nurse LTH back to health, LTH will no longer need to bear the RM10.3bil of losses on the value of these assets, as the losses are borne by Urusharta Jamaah and the Malaysian government.

“LTH will also no longer need to be burdened with the risk of further losses on these transferred assets, ” it said.

To recap, Urusharta Jamaah said in the statement that after the change of government in 2018, PwC was appointed to conduct the financial position review on LTH.

PwC discovered various steps taken by the previous administration to artificially inflate and manipulate the profitability of the fund.

The findings included not prudently recording the impairment of assets and suspicious financial transactions to book inflated profits in order to pay dividends.

The PwC report also noted that LTH’s liabilities exceeded its assets and hence required a rescue and restructuring plan by the government to ensure the fund remains a going concern.

In January 2019, LTH lodged a police report in connection with its 2017 financial statements.

A rescue package was proposed by LTH and Urusharta Jamaah acquired RM9.63bil worth of assets from LTH for RM19.9bil via issuance of two series sukuk and cash to LTH.

“This means that the government effectively paid RM10.3bil more to rescue LTH.

It also said the assets transferred to Urusharta Jamaah did not include land or assets under TH Plantations Berhad (in which the shares remain under the ownership of LTH).

As a result of the restructuring exercise, LTH registered a profit of RM1.3bil for the first nine months of 2019. For the same period, its total assets also improved, exceeding its liabilities by RM2.3bil.