Lately, Felda Global Ventures Berhad (FGV) has attracted lots of attention. Mainly it is centred on its less than satisfactory performance since listing. Some significant shareholders have expressed their displeasure and some have even ceased to remain as the shareholders.

I am not a corporate expert or fund manager. So I will just make some simple observations and ask some simple questions. Hopefully those more learned will be able to enlighten the rest of us.

FGV was listed in mid-2012, hailed as the second largest initial public offering (IPO) after Facebook. The IPO reference price was RM4.55 per share. In fact, at the initial trading after listing, the price was traded as high as RM5.46.

Although the IPO price is not a guarantee of true value, it is nonetheless the market’s valuation of the company at that time. The price was determined by large number of institutional investors through the book-building process. Hence, at around RM5.00 per share, I believe it was a fair representation of FGV’s valuation in mid-2012.

Today the listing price of FGV is around RM1.70 per share. In fact, it has been hovering at around this level for a long time.

So between 2012 and 2017, may I know what has happened in FGV? Did the company suffer from any natural catastrophe that wiped out its assets? Did poor commodity prices affect only FGV and no other plantation companies? In fact, most plantation companies are doing reasonably well during this period even with less than stellar commodity prices.

I am sure all the institutional investors valuing FGV at RM5.00 per share in 2012 can’t be all wrong at the same time. However, today many of them are suffering massive losses, including EPF which has divested from FGV completely as reported.

I am glad that FGV is a listed company. Otherwise we may not even know the company has suffered so much depreciation of its market value. Now it is for those in the know to tell us why - why the value of the company, instead of growing like others, has depreciated so much within the last five years?

What losses have they incurred? What poor investments have they made? What blunders have they committed? What non-core businesses have they ventured into?

What is FGV’s yield and replanting cost per hectare when compared with other plantation company? What about cost per tonne of palm oil produced by FGV vis-à-vis other plantation companies?

Felda was one the most successful social-economic engineering programmes ever undertaken by Malaysia. No other country has ever enjoyed this feat. These are facts. Sadly, I think a group of allegedly half-baked corporate chieftains has completely destroyed this institution within a few years that our forefathers had taken a generation to build.

Where else is this group of allegedly half-baked corporate chieftains going next - Felcra, Mara, the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), Lembaga Tabung Angkatan Tentera (LTAT), or Tabung Haji?