Many years ago there was this advert running on British Television promoting fresh cow's milk featuring the legendary Liverpool/Wales striker Ian Rush saying ‘if you don't drink enough milk you will end up playing for Accrington & Stanley' and then the other person asks ‘Accrington who?' to which Ian Rush replies ‘exactly'.

The current spate of Malaysian personalities buying not so known British Football Clubs raises the same sort of feeling and queries. But hey, they are spending their private money so it is nobody's business to question anything. Well, until recently that is.

When Tony Fernandes bought QPR many of us thought it was not a wise move but each to its own.

However, I did tell my friends back then to just wait few months and we will find AirAsia sponsoring them. Well, we didn't have to wait months, just within one month, not only AirAsia but MAS as well had jumped on the bandwagon.

Both Air Asia and MAS are publicly listed companies and I believe the sponsoring of the owners'/directors' private enterprises should be considered a related party transaction and therefore should get shareholder approval at a general meeting.

Now are the regulators going to question this? Even if no Malaysian rule was broken, surely this is bad corporate governance?

Lets not even go to calculating return on investments for these sponsorship sums which is a separate matter altogether.

MAS is clocking up operating losses - surely sponsoring a lower echelon football club should not be on its priority spending list, given the dire straits it's in and the pressure it is facing from unions.

Based on the published second quarter operating results, MAS suffered a staggering second quarter loss of RM526 million and a cumulative six month period loss up to 30th June 2011 amounting to RM767 million.

Let us not forget the past restructuring of MAS including the widespread asset unbundling exercise which involved lot of taxpayers' money.

Imagine the furore that would erupted if Warren Buffet were to buy say Norwich City Football Club privately and then get Berkshire Investment to sponsor shirts or stadiums.

This is why a public company which is only 25 percent owned by public and 75 percent owned by just one or two persons should not really be categorised as a public company.

Previously I had raised questions why Telekom was sponsoring Manchester United or Petronas sponsoring FI teams when both do not have global products or services for sale.

So is this all about suiting the personal preference of someone but which brings no benefits to the company?

Off course the public relations and marketing gurus will rubbish me and say these are corporate advertising strategies to enhance the company's image.

But public companies do not have to be extravagant. There are so many more alternatives to do this without going over the top.

Indeed some Malaysian government agencies and companies have even taken to spending a lot of money buying advertisements in foreign papers which are again superfluous and wasteful.

All I can say is really "Mana Ada Sistem".