Dato’ Sri Abdul Wahid Omar has been appointed Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department. We do not expect his departure to have a significant impact on operations in the near term as the group already has in place an experienced management team. Pending Maybank’s 1Q13 results next week, we maintain our BUY call and fair value of MYR10.95 (15x CY13 EPS).

♦  Change of guard shaping up at Maybank. Dato’ Sri Abdul Wahid Omar, Maybank’s current President and CEO, has been appointed Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of the Economic Planning Unit. We note that Maybank has yet to announce his departure on Bursa Malaysia, although according to press reports, Maybank is reportedly searching for a suitable replacement.

♦  Job well done. Dato’ Sri Abdul Wahid joined Maybank back in May 2008. He led Maybank through a transformation programme in 2010, which saw Maybank reorganise its operations into three business pillars (House of Maybank), i.e. 1) Community Financial Services (retail and SME); 2) Global Wholesale Banking; and 3) Insurance & Takaful. The new organisation structure resulted in renewed focus in these areas, leading to, among others, Maybank regaining market share in the retail and SME segments, and becoming more visible in the investment and wholesale banking space. Overall, Dato’ Sri Abdul Wahid has done a good job during his tenure, in our view.

♦  Impending departure unlikely to impact operations too significantly. Near-term, we believe Maybank already has in place a season and experience management team to cope with the departure and handle the daily operations. Furthermore, we believe 2013 earnings remain well supported by the group’s existing loan and capital market pipelines. Beyond that, much would depend on the direction set by the successor, although we think this may just involve some fine-tuning given that the building blocks are already in place.  

♦  Forecasts. No change to our earnings forecasts for now. Maybank is expected to release 1QFY13 results sometime next week.  

♦  Investment case. Our fair value of MYR10.95 is unchanged, which is based on target CY13 PER of 15x. The impending departure does not change our view of Maybank being an excellent proxy to ETP activities and would benefit from the pick-up in business lending activities now that the general elections overhang has been lifted. Maintain BUY call.