QUESTION TIME Yes, he left to re-join his friend, tycoon Tong Kooi Ong, the owner of The Edge in Malaysia and Singapore. But the facts indicate that there must be more - much more than that - for Ho Kay Tat, group managing director and CEO, to leave a lucrative post at The Star for something much smaller right now.

ho kay tat Ho, a former journalist who has worked at The Malay Mail , Reuters and Singapore Business Times , may have been enticed by other opportunities, including a new newspaper and a significant equity stake among others, while there undoubtedly were push factors from within The Star and the political and other pressures he was subject to.

Before we begin a detailed examination of the reasons why he left The Star , it would do well to explain why he joined it in the first place. Part 1 deals with just that while Part 2 next week will talk about why he then left The Star .

First, it is only appropriate that I declare whatever interests I may have in relation to this article and make a short introduction to my ‘Question Time' column.

I was managing editor, handling primarily the business section, at The Star from late 2008 until my contract expired at the end of 2011. I chose not to seek a renewal of the contract but after its expiry, I continued writing two columns a week for the newspaper - ‘Question Time' which dealt with general interest issues and ‘A Question of Business' which dealt with business issues.

New business news portal

When it came to light that I was going into a joint venture with Malaysiakini to produce a business news portal called KiniBiz , the group chief editor of The Star , Wong Chun Wai, told me that both Ho and himself were not comfortable about me continuing as a columnist.

(Ironically, it was Ho who offered me a column and shortly after that, a job at business weekly The Edge , where he was chief editor, in 2001 after the New Straits Times stopped my column. The column in The Edge ran for some seven years until I left in 2008, when I was group executive editor.)

NONE I wrote an email to both Wong ( right in photo ) and Ho explaining that KiniBiz would eventually be a subscription-based standalone, independent business news portal aiming for a niche market and would therefore pose no direct competition to The Star's own online news, which was free in any case.

I further said that I have had a look at Malaysiakini's accounts and shareholding structure and was convinced that its health was not dependent on support from international financier and hedge fund operator George Soros.

I added that I was sure that there was no plot by Malaysiakini to overthrow the government and that its founders - Steven Gan and Premesh Chandran - and I shared the same ideals of fair, independent and knowledgeable coverage with no agenda to serve anyone. Premesh will be CEO of KiniBiz , while I will be its founding editor and publisher.

For the most part, I had assumed, the concerns of Ho and Wong were over the numerous reports carried in some sections of the mainstream press, including The Star , alleging a Jewish and foreign conspiracy to destabilise the government. But I believe I underestimated how much The Star considered Malaysiakini as its competitor in the online realm.

NONE I expressed my willingness to continue with the columns. After all, The Star has a huge reach of over one million readers and any writer would want that. The terms under which I wrote for The Star did not preclude me from using the columns in other online forums, the arrangement being The Star would have exclusive rights for English language print media in Malaysia.

I had at all times tried to keep the arguments in the columns accurate, reasonable and fair without compromising on editorial and personal integrity, although this meant that sometimes the columns were not used and there were many things I could not write about.

However, I was politely told to discontinue the columns several weeks ago. As I was doing a joint venture with Malaysiakini , it is only natural that ‘Question Time' continues here (and eventually, other media that want to use it). The other one - ‘A Question of Business' or its equivalent - will feature in KiniBiz when it is set up early next year.

‘Question Time' basically examines issues of general public interest and raises questions and suggests reasons, solutions and answers for the myriad issues facing our country. Its primary aim is to raise awareness and reasoned thinking about things that affect all of us and it has run in different newspapers for over 12 years, which also included free newspaper The Sun for a while.

Boardroom changes

Sorry about that long but necessary introduction. Back to Ho and his reasons for leaving The Star , the official version of which is that he is going to help his friend Tong, who owns The Edge and related media.

If that was indeed the reason, why did Ho leave Tong in the first place? He was at The Edge before he joined The Star and held the position of managing director and group chief editor.

But one needs to go back in time for a better understanding of the issues. Ho is generally credited, rightly I think, for taking The Edge to its heights after joining it in 1996 as its editor-in-chief.

In 2004, he became managing director and chief editor of The Sun when the newspaper became jointly owned by Tong's interests and that of another tycoon, Vincent Tan of Berjaya fame, who had been running The Sun at a loss for some years.

Ho spearheaded the move to turn The Sun into a free newspaper and did a good job of improving editorial content and drawing advertisers in, taking the newspaper close to breakeven. But as managing director in addition to being chief editor, profit became his focus and editorial content was sometimes compromised to get advertising revenue.

vincent tan sports betting The alliance between Vincent Tan ( left ) and Tong soured and was unwound with The Edge going back to Tong and Tan taking back control of The Sun . Ho went back to The Edge , a bitter man with a much smaller empire and reach in 2008.

Meantime, at the end of 2008, after Ong Tee Keat became MCA president, Steven Tan was forced out as executive deputy chairperson (EDC) at The Star , with Clement Hii of listed education company Segi, said to be Ong's confidante, replacing him in January 2009.

Steven Tan, who joined The Star in the mid-80s, is largely credited with steering the newspaper out of losses and into profitability. His tenure also covered the six-month suspension in 1987 The Star endured under Dr Mahathir Mohamad's government and its Operasi Lalang. It returned much stronger after the suspension.

As a former corporate newsman who headed the companies' section of Business Times (then a standalone business newspaper, the country's first), Steven Tan had a strong head for business and was quick to seize the opportunities opened up by the floundering New Straits Times to put The Star firmly and indisputably into the number one seat among English language newspapers in Malaysia.

In an environment where fair news reporting became increasingly difficult, he pushed through other sections such as the leisure and lighter Section 2, the Metro section, supplements and classifieds where The Malay Mail , the leader at one time, was all but annihilated. The Star became a noticeably heavier paper, literally. All that kept The Star at the top of the table because the others were not much better than it, if at all they were, at news.

The EDC's position was supposed to be a transition to enable Steven Tan to eventually relinquish power to his designated successor, Linda Ngiam, who was appointed group managing director and CEO on July 1, 2008. It was rather a strange thing to have an executive on top of the CEO but it seemed to be allowed subsequently in the interest of political expediency.

It was during Hii's time that negotiations were initiated for Ho to join the executive team as Ngiam was due for retirement in the following year (2011). Ngiam herself initiated the negotiations and this was followed up by Hii later.

Well-paid executives

In March 2010, Chua Soi Lek beat both Ong Tee Keat and Ong Ka Ting in a three-cornered fight for the MCA presidency, setting the stage for another round of board changes at The Star .

NONE Vincent Lee ( right in photo ), an advertising man who owns among other things Naga DDB, was appointed to the board in May 2010. Lee, a close friend of Ho, would become EDC later.

Ho joined as chief operating officer (COO) in July 2010 with the understanding that he will ascend to the CEO's position when Ngiam steps down. His appointment after Chua's election as president of MCA clearly implied that it had approval from the top MCA brass, including Chua.

That move gave him direct entry into the top echelons of the largest English language paid daily in Malaysia with a circulation of about 300,000 and the most profitable newspaper company in the country. (By July 2011, on Ngiam's retirement, Ho became group managing director and CEO.)

For Ho, that was a restoration of sorts after the ignominy of being forced out of The Sun where Vincent Tan re-assumed control. It would give him an opportunity to see what he could do at The Star .

Plus, it was a lucrative deal. As COO he would earn some RM1.5 million a year and this would rise to over RM3 million a year at least once he became CEO. The Star's executive directors are very well paid, with the EDC earning nearly RM7 million in 2011. Public records also indicate that group chief editor Wong, an executive director, earns over RM2 million a year.

It was simply a matter of scale. The RM3 million plus earnings a year that Ho would receive at The Star would be about 30 percent of the pre-tax profit of The Edge . So there would be no way that Tong can match that. Ho had the blessings of Tong for that move. At that time Tong could not offer him much more than The Edge, which had a niche market. They remained very close friends.

That's explanation enough for why Ho joined The Star . Next Thursday, we will examine the reasons why Ho left.

Part 2: Why Ho Kay Tat left The Star

P GUNASEGARAM has been a journalist and analyst for over 30 years, having worked in key positions in Malaysian newspapers and magazines including Business Times , Malaysian Business , The Edge and The Star . He has also worked as an analyst and head of equity research at local and foreign brokerage firms. Early next year, he will help launch business news portal KiniBiz in a joint venture with Malaysiakini .