BY EMIR ZAINUL AND JOSE BARROCK

For much of his career, Datuk Rizal Rickman Ramli helped shape other organisations’ strategies. Today, he is responsible for executing one of Malaysia’s most consequential investment strategies.

Little was publicly known about the former Boston Consulting Group managing director before he emerged as Permodalan Nasional Bhd’s (PNB) new president and chief executive. An economics graduate of the University of Chicago with an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, he had joined the country’s largest fund management company in 2018 after spending nearly two decades in consulting, and formally took over the top job on July 1 this year.

As the first internal appointment to lead PNB since Tan Sri Hamad Kama Piah Che Othman in 1998, Rizal Rickman, who goes by Rick, inherited an institution in the midst of a multi-year transformation, rather than one in need of a reset (…)