Amir IskandarChief Executive Officer · Essays & perspective
Amir Iskandar · Chief Executive Officer · Singapore / Southeast Asia
Where an operator's chief executive could help a regulated board
My contribution to a board
Three things, I think, would be useful to a board outside my industry.
The first is experience of running a licensed business under undertakings to its regulator. Seralis lives with commitments it offered in its own merger, an independent annual audit of one of them and a regulator that reads our complaints data. Companies in electricity networks, ports, water or payments face the question I face every quarter: whether a commitment is being met in substance or only on paper. I know the difference from the inside, and I know which management reports blur it.
The second is an engineer's view of physical risk. I have spent thirty years with networks that fail in floods, lose power and depend on contractors in remote places. I would ask the questions that show whether resilience has been priced or merely assumed: what happens when two things fail at once, who repairs them and how long the company can tolerate the wait.
The third is experience of large shareholders with more than one interest. At Seralis our three largest shareholders are, in different ways, a policy voice, a commercial partner and a former employer of mine. I have learnt to keep their requests inside the boardroom, to price them and to recuse myself where my own history makes me the wrong person to judge. A company with a government-linked or family shareholder would get a director who has practised that discipline as an executive and would apply it more strictly as an independent.
I would not bring deep accounting expertise. I read financial statements carefully and have presented to audit committees for six years, but I would not be any committee's financial expert. My natural place is a risk committee, where I would expect to be useful within the first year, and a nomination and remuneration committee, where the experience of combining two workforces and two pay structures would be relevant.
Judgement in practice
01
Reporting a billing error before the complaints did
In September 2024, during our billing migration, a rating fault charged 212,000 prepaid customers for data already covered by their weekly passes. Over nine days the overcharges came to RM4.1 million. The migration team proposed correcting the fault and crediting the accounts quietly; our lawyers advised that no specific reporting duty clearly applied. I took the matter to the Board Risk and Sustainability Committee with a different recommendation: automatic refunds with a 10 per cent goodwill credit, a message to every affected customer and a voluntary report to the regulator before its complaints statistics showed the problem. The total cost was RM4.5 million. The regulator acknowledged the report and asked for nothing further. On a board I would ask management the question that decided it for me: who outside the company would want to know this, and will they hear it from us first?
02
Stepping out of a negotiation with my former employer
In 2025 Seralis renegotiated its roaming and wholesale agreements with Corvantis's operating companies, worth about RM70 million a year and treated as recurrent related-party transactions under Bursa Malaysia's rules. I had worked for Corvantis for nine years and still held a small number of its shares from an old incentive plan. Nothing in the rules required me to stand aside from the commercial negotiation, but I told the chair that I should. Our chief commercial officer led it, supported by an independent pricing benchmark, and I left the room when the Audit Committee and the board considered the terms. The new agreements came in about 7 per cent below the previous ones. I sold the remaining Corvantis shares later that year. As a director I would expect the same of any executive whose history touches a transaction, whether or not a rule requires it.
03
Withholding a speed claim the averages supported
Before our fixed-wireless campaign in early 2025, marketing proposed advertising typical speeds of 100 Mbps. An average across all districts supported the figure. Our own peak-hour data did not: in 22 per cent of districts, median evening speeds were below 40 Mbps. I declined the claim. We advertised by district instead, stating measured evening medians, and we stopped selling new connections in the most congested cells until capacity was added. The campaign sold about 30,000 fewer connections in that half-year than the plan assumed, and our marketing director thought I was being overcautious. Complaints per thousand fixed-wireless customers fell by about a third over the following year. A board can test management's public claims the same way: ask which customers the average describes, and which it hides.
My first year on a board
Before my first meeting I would ask the company secretary for a reading list longer than the induction pack: two years of board and committee minutes, the risk register with every change made to it over that period, the most recent internal audit reports on operational resilience, and any correspondence with regulators that the board has already seen. I would also ask to visit whichever asset the company would least like to lose, in the company of the people who maintain it.
In the first two quarters I would mostly ask questions, and I would try to ask most of them outside the meeting, so that the boardroom is not used for my education. I would meet the heads of internal audit and risk on their own, and the external auditor without management present, as committee practice allows.
By the anniversary of my appointment I would expect to have formed a view on two things: whether the risk register describes the risks that would actually hurt the company, and whether management brings the board decisions or announcements. I would give that view to the chair privately before raising any of it formally, and I would ask the chair to tell me, just as plainly, whether my contributions had been worth the board's time.
Conflicts and their management
My conflicts fall into four groups, and I would disclose all of them in writing before any appointment is considered.
Employer. I am Seralis's chief executive and an executive director. I would not join the board of any telecommunications operator, tower company, data-centre business, network-equipment supplier, content platform or dealer group, or of any company with a material commercial relationship with Seralis. I would need my board's written consent for any appointment.
Shareholders. I would decline seats at companies controlled by Teguh Permata Holdings or Corvantis Group. Government-linked investors hold shares in a large part of Bursa Malaysia, so a common shareholder alone would not trouble me, but I would disclose it, and if the two companies ever dealt with each other I would recuse myself.
History. I worked for Corvantis for nine years. I sold my remaining Corvantis shares in 2025 and hold none today, but I would still declare the association wherever it might matter.
Time. Seralis reports quarterly and fixes its calendar a year ahead. I would agree the other company's calendar against it before accepting, and if a crisis at Seralis ever prevented me from preparing properly, I would tell the chair before the meeting rather than attend unprepared.
My independence statement
I run a listed telecommunications company and would remain its chief executive. I would take an independent seat only where neither Seralis nor its three largest shareholders has a business relationship of consequence with the company, and where nothing in my nine years with Corvantis or my family's interests connects me to it. Every relationship would be set out in writing before any discussion. Whether I can be regarded as independent is for that company's board to decide under its own exchange's rules; I would not presume the answer.
Board and committee exposure
Served as a director
Seralis Communications Berhad
Board of directors, as its only executive director
March 2024–present
Votes on the board as an executive director, with a standing recusal from matters involving Corvantis Group, a former employer.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Seralis Communications Berhad
Audit Committee: integration accounting, merger-related provisions and recurrent related-party transactions with shareholder groups
March 2024–present
Attends by invitation to present management's papers with the chief financial officer; not a committee member.
Reported to a committee
Seralis Communications Berhad
Board Risk and Sustainability Committee: network resilience, cyber security and compliance with merger undertakings
March 2024–present
Reports each quarter on the resilience programme and receives the remedy-compliance team's findings alongside the committee.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Altirra Wireless Sdn Bhd
Board of directors: turnaround plan, merger evaluation and negotiation
July 2020–February 2024
Presented the recommendation to seek a merger and the remedy proposal to a board split between two shareholders.
Served as a director
Veyara Mobile Co., Ltd.
Board of the Cambodian operating company, in an executive capacity
January 2016–June 2020
Approved the operating company's accounts, the network-sharing agreement and its capital plans as chief executive and director.