PETALING JAYA, July 30 — In his autobiography “The Sea and The Hills” — a story of oil, politics and justice, Hussain Ahmad Najadi described himself as a rebel, a dangerous student activist and troublemaker leading the agitation for independence in the eyes of British authorities in colonial Bahrain many years ago.
Ejected from his home country, the late chairman and chief executive officer of the AIAK Group, a corporate and advisory firm based in Kuala Lumpur, said he still had that rebellious streak.
He was gunned down in cold blood, while his wife was seriously injured when they emerged from the Kuan Yin Temple in Lorong Ceylon, Kuala Lumpur yesterday.
A gunman who crept from behind, fired randomly at Ahmad Najadi, 75, and his 49-year-old wife at close range, killing the renowned banker on the spot near a car park.
Throughout a four-decade career of sensational highs and lows in global finance, sales and business, Ahmad Najadi said he had never abandoned his commitment to social justice and the human side of capitalism.
“My own story starts in a different era. Life then had been lived as it was by generation upon generation for perhaps a thousand years. This tradition provided society with its rules and ritual, its comfort and stability. From my youngest years onwards, I was to break the mould of that tradition.”
Best known for having founded Arab-Malaysian Development Bank in 1979 (later renamed AmBank), currently Malaysia’s fifth-largest banking group, he was also the founding strategic adviser to a number of commercial and investment banks in Malaysia.
He had pioneered numerous other business links between the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Europe, in whose diverse cultures and languages he is equally at home.
He founded and served as director of the Euro-Asian Center at the prestigious INSEAD business school at Fontainebleau, France (1977-85), while also chairing the initial gathering of developing countries at the Davos Economic Symposium (World Economic Forum), Switzerland.
