MICA Week 3

Case – Ireka Construction Berhad: A Chinese Family Business Goes Public Hosted By – The Yellow Team

LEAD TEAM

REPORT

Pawan Patel * Shaan Dewan * Daniella Rubio Cardenad * Maximilian

Roeser * Ksenia Shakova

Case: Ireka Construction Berhad, a Malaysian family firm founded in 1967 by Lai Siew Wah

has operated into its second generation, with most senior positions filled by family-

related members. Although they began by constructing factory sites, housing lots and

small road works, they have grown rapidly to construct bridges, flyover highways, and

hotels and undertake government and global projects as well. Ireka went public in 1992,

under the second Kuala Lumpur stock exchange, hence increasing their funding, allowing

them to undertake bigger and more diverse projects. The “Ireka led consortium signed a

memorandum of understanding with the Philippine National Construction Cooperation to

finance, design and construct a section of an elevated highway system in Manila” , which

is one example of the growth opportunities taken by Ireka after its public offering.

Through the countless ups and downs of the Malaysian economy, Ireka managed to stay

afloat due to their good internal management, which built cooperation and loyalty

amongst employees. Being “one of the largest fleets of civil engineering plants and

machinery in Malaysia”, Ireka employed 500 people, who were loyal, qualified, and

produced profits of approximately RMB 7,584,000. Ireka at this point began

professionalizing the business, writing formal vision statements, hiring more qualified

personnel, long-term planning, diversifying their portfolio and concentrating on HR

issues. Overall, the underlying reason for success for Ireka has been due to their family

values, which have reflected on their business values, building friendship and loyalty

amongst employees, whether family or not. From simple steps such as changing the

company name to give it less personal importance to a more mission-led title, to a full

over-haul of business principals, Ireka (“I create”) is a perfect example of a family

business that focuses on the business, as opposed to the family.

Debate: In order to have a successful first debate we got each group to give a report that was to

include a summary of the case, three family related issues, three business related issues,

and recommendations that would solve these problems. The submitted reports were then

sent to all groups so they could strengthen their argument or pick apart the other teams.

Furthermore all reports analyzed and compared by our team to find differences and

similarities, which were used to establish points of debate. On the day of the debate each

of the teams were asked to give a short presentation of their report so as to reminded

each team of their reports. After the presentation we commenced our debate, which were

based around similar points highlighted by teams. This allowed the debate to take place

on the suggested recommendation. While four members of the group were conducting the

MICA session, two were used as background observer’s whose notes were used as the

basis of this report.

Executive Summary

Dear all

As you know, we, the Yellow team will be leading the MICA debate on Tuesday.

The Case we will be debating on is: IREKA CONSTRUCTION BERHAD: A Chinese

Family Goes Public.

For the MICA each group should prepare one report containing the following:

-Executive Summary of the case (not more than 2 paragraphs)

-3 critical Family issues identified in the case

-3 critical Business issues identified in the case

-Recommendations to overcome each one of these issues.

-The report should be 3 pages, as suggested by Ed. If you do extend yourself please make

sure it will not be more than 5 pages!!!

-Also remember to use bullet points, these make the reading much easier.

-You can also back up your suggestions with facts. (For more instructions refer to Ed´s

recommendations on the MICA report given to us in class)

You should be sending this report to Ed and me by this Friday the 12th at 6 pm.

We will send you on Sunday (14th) before 6 pm the Debate Format that will be used by

this lead team on Tuesday.

Ksenia, Dimitrious, Max, Pawan, Shaan and Daniella

Instructions:

1. Ice breaker: Fun quiz with chocolate give-away to create a relaxed atmosphere which

foster participation.

2. Group Presentations and Q&A Sessions:

Each group will present their issues with their proposed solutions. Each presentation

should last between 3 to 5 minutes.

The Lead Team, after each presentation, we will randomly choose 4 people from the

audience. These 4 will people will be asked to make questions to the group members who

have just presented. The group members will answer these questions. Please know that

we will try to make everyone participate in asking questions.

Two members from the Lead Team will be making notes of the questions and answers in

order to prepare the final report.

Order In that the groups will present:

First group to present: The Blue Team (Ali, Djalal, Galina, Haithem)

Second group to present: The Green Team (Sofia, Eleonora, Shaloo, Karan)

Third group to present: The Gold Team (Maxi, Inga, Monique, Eshanka)

3. Voting

At the end of the group and Q&A sessions all students will vote for the group they

consider have elaborated the best action plan for the IREKA Family Business.

Please note that you should not vote for your group.

We have attached each group's issues and solutions so you can read them prior to the

debate.

Debate format

Blue Team Members: Ali

Djalal

Galina

Haithem

Strengths:

Highlighted key points of the case: Showed a clear analysis of the case, which

demonstrated that they have read the case in its entirety. The executive summary

was concise and touched on all the key occurrences in the case study.

Identified suitable key issues: The suggested three family and business issues

asked to identify were on par with some of the ones the lead team generated.

The blue team was the only team, which used quotes from the case study to

support their suggestions. This added to the overall strengths of the report.

Weaknesses:

Each issue did not have an attached recommendation, which made the report a

little hard to read.

They mentioned that the involvement of family members should be limited and

that more non-family members need to be promoted. However they failed to

mention what existing family members occupying positions should do.

Analysis of Group Reports

Gold Team Members: Hao qiang Ma

Inga Gening

Monique Alofoje

Eshanka Wahi

Strengths:

Well-structured report with each issue followed by a highlighted recommendation

making the report easy on the eye to read.

They included individual recommendations and group recommendation which, if

the debate was allowed to go on for longer, would have been helpful to pick

members out to encourage them to contribute.

Weaknesses:

The report was five pages however the useful context to our debate context and

structure made up a very small part of the report.

Each recommendation was explained with too much detail and bullet points

would have sufficed.

Green Team Members: Sofia Gross

Eleonora Costi

Shaloo Aggarwal

Karan Ranka

Strengths:

This report was an organized report, which included a title page and spaced

sections making the report easy to read and dissect.

Each issue was raised as a key point, which had a brief description that put it in

context of the case. This gave us the basis points to of the debate.

Weaknesses:

One of the recommendations they had came across for as issue, however the

explanation got the point across.

The recommendations could have been better explained and left less open ended

We felt that the Blue team had done a very in depth analysis of the company and the

report was well documented and presented. It contained a varied amount of

recommendations with an analysis on the family’s issues. However when it came to the

presentation, we felt that they often repeated themselves and read directly from the

report’s recommendations. They had not included new ones nor had they elaborated

further, especially with regards to the family issues.

11/15

We thought that the Green Teams report was well structured and contained relevant

information. However as it had individual recommendation we felt that some points had

too much overlap. They also did not focus on too many family issues. However, when it

came to the presentation, they elaborated on various family issues and came up with

recommendations. They also included more recommendations then were in the report.

12/15

The Gold teams report was well structured and included more recommendations that

were relevant to family issues. They elaborated on this further within the presentation. As

only 2 people were present for the presentation we felt that they would have done better if

there were more people to add their opinions. However we felt that they had done very

well as they elaborated on the main issues within the business and family.

11/15

Scoring and Analysis

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