KUALA LUMPUR: Financial advisory firm Jentayu Danaraksa Sdn Bhd is re-evaluating its “alternative proposal” for loss-making Malaysian Airline System Bhd (MAS) after failing to secure a meeting with Khazanah Nasional Bhd yesterday.

A planned meeting between representatives from Khazanah and Jentayu was cancelled at the last minute.

“It is understood that the sovereign wealth fund was unhappy that Jentayu had gone to the press and the social media about their proposal before discussing the details with Khazanah,” a source close to the matter told the The Edge Financial Daily yesterday.

“Khazanah had called to cancel the meeting and we are disappointed that we were not given the chance to present our proposal,” Jentayu director Shukor Yusof said when contacted yesterday.

“There was also no indication that the meeting had been postponed,” he said. Shukor said the company’s board of directors will sit down and deliberate over the next few days on the next course of action to be taken.

When asked if there was a possibility that the entire proposal could be aborted, he said: “Jentayu has not decided on that.”

However, Shukor stated that Jentayu “will continue to serve the corporate sector as it was not set up for this purpose (to rebuild MAS) alone”.

Khazanah had on Nov 28 announced that it had received no less than 28 business proposals expressing interest in participating in or complementing its five-year, 12-point recovery plan for the loss-making national carrier.

“In this regard, we wish to state that as required by Khazanah’s operating processes and procedures, only credible proposals are evaluated and assessed, in a process that, if they qualify, will be ultimately tabled to the board of directors of Khazanah, or if appropriate, channelled to the management and board of the operating company (in this case, MAS),” Khazanah had said.

Jentayu had earlier submitted a proposal to the Prime Minister’s Office to take over several assets within MAS, as part of an alternative proposal to complement Khazanah’s 12-point plan for MAS.

On Monday, Shukor had told a press conference that the company was meeting Khazanah officials at 5pm yesterday to discuss its proposal.

He also said that the company had tweaked its US$2.5 billion (RM8.7 billion) revamp plan to set up a new airline to be called Fly JD, adding that the company had dropped its original plan of taking over MAS assets including MAS Engineering Sdn Bhd and FlyFirefly Sdn Bhd.

Jentayu is now proposing to form an entity called JD Leasing to fully acquire the loss-making Penerbangan Malaysia Bhd, while providing strategic shares to Khazanah, at no cost.

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on December 17, 2014.