Hazem Abdul Rahman is now in the spotlight as the chief excutive officer of 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) - a position he came into after former CEO Shahrol Halmi left suddenly to join the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu).

A former analyst with Deutsche Bank, Hazem joined 1MDB as the chief operating officer in August last year.

Prior to that, he was with Sime Darby Bhd’s unit, Auto ConneXions Sdn Bhd, where he had been its CEO.

Shahrol, meanwhile, has already joined Pemandu and has been working there since last week.

Analysts and observers were puzzled with the move, and the haste with which it happened.

“Why would Shahrol leave 1MDB where all the action is - all the exciting mergers and acquisition opportunities - to head Pemandu, which oversees the implementation and facilitates the progress of the Government Transformation Programme and the Economic Transformation Programme?” an analyst asked.

However, Shahrol will remain a director of 1MDB.

Shahrol had a stint with Accenture Malaysia’s public service practice, and had spent more than a decade doing IT transformation and integration.

In addition, he played a role in the merger of Sime Darby, which lead to the creation of the giant plantation company it is today.

On that note, he has also led transformation programmes at the Employees Provident Fund before.

However, a director of a government-linked company (GLC) thought that the move was not unusual.

“It’s actually no big deal, both Pemandu and 1MDB are controlled by the Finance Ministry. It’s more like a shuffling of people... it’s not like he (Shahrol) left the system. Don’t read too much into things,” he said.

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