Pua: Disasters like FashionValet expected in venture capital investments

Bad investments like FashionValet are part of known risks in making capital venture investments, said former lawmaker Tony Pua.

The former political secretary to the finance minister from 2018 to 2020 said that there will always be more failures than successes in ventures.

“The venture capital game is to expect that out of 10 investments - three or four will be disasters - like FashionValet - three or four will just about cover cost, while two or three make spectacular returns,” he said on Facebook yesterday.

He was commenting on the backlash against FashionValet over an RM44 million loss in value that Khazanah Nasional and Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB) suffered.

Khazanah and PNB invested in the clothing brand in March 2018, two months before Pakatan Harapan took power that year.

Where’s the evidence?

In his post, Pua did not discount the possibility of wrongdoing in FashionValet but remarked that critics have not furnished any evidence to back up such claims thus far. 

The former Damansara MP warned that overt criticism will create a culture where decision-makers will not take risks. 

“FashionValet was always going to be a high-risk investment. So was Grab, in its early days.

“When Khazanah didn’t invest in Grab in its early days, and Grab moved its HQ to Singapore due to the availability of funds there, we were critical that we missed the boat.

“So we can’t have it both ways. You can’t be pissed if we didn’t invest, and be pissed when we did,” Pua said.

FashionValet co-founders Vivy Yusof and her husband Fadzaruddin Shah Anuar took responsibility for the Khazanah and PNB losses after the matter came to light last week. 

The company is under MACC investigation over the losses while Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has ordered Khazanah to conduct an internal probe.

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