His employees codenamed him ‘God’ — a nod to his omnipotence within his empire and his amazing influence outside of it. Indeed, for Ananda Krishnan — who funded the first globally-staged musical relief for African famine victims and delivered Malaysia’s (and at one time, the world’s) tallest towers — nothing seemed impossible.
Yet, ask AK — the name most people call him by — about the power he wields, and he’ll laugh.
“I have heard some people say I have a low profile,” the reclusive billionaire told a journalist once, the remark reproduced by Bloomberg after he succumbed to a lung ailment on Nov 28, 2024, at the age of 86, at his home in the Swiss mountains.
“Why should somebody be high profile anyway?” AK asked that reporter. “I am just doing my job. If you say I have a low profile, then by definition it means, I should be high profile. But why?”
There are, of course, many “whys”.
Without AK’s help, we might have never witnessed a global musical extravaganza watched live by almost two billion people across 150 nations that accounted for nearly 40 percent of the world population then. Bob Geldof, the public face of that so-called Live Aid ‘85, got knighted by Queen E to become Sir Bob. AK got a belated exposé in Newsweek instead (Live Aid’s Shy Tycoon, it was called) and a few other press mentions that were soon forgotten — exactly as he wished them to be.
Also, without AK, the Kuala Lumpur skyline would probably not have been one of the most talked about in the 90s. Malaysia’s prime minister then, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, wanted to put his capital on the world map with something extraordinary. And Malaysian-born AK had just what the doctor ordered — the world’s tallest twin towers. At nearly $1 billion for the towers alone and another $2 billion on adjacent properties, the new city-within-a-city called KLCC was Malaysia’s most grandiose idea yet.
“Basically, the man (AK) was handpicked by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, as his self-established international credibility was part of the element in ensuring … the project will get international/local funding,” Leo Foo, an architectural enthusiast who followed the development until its launch in 1997, said on his website.
To be sure of delivering to Dr. Mahathir, AK himself picked Cesar Pelli, a building designer whose handiwork included London’s Canary Wharf and New York’s World Financial Centre. The end result: Bragging rights for Malaysia for having constructed one of the most awe-inspiring 20th century edifices, even after the 88-story Petronas Twin Towers were eclipsed in later years by Taipei 101 and Dubai’s Burj.
After the hue and applause though, some began to wonder how much money AK made from this and his other dealings.
AK’s Secret: Doing It Secretly
Save for a few scraps reported in the financial dailies from regulatory filings by his companies, outsiders hardly knew AK’s net worth. Bloomberg estimated it at $3.8 billion. Forbes had it at $4.8 billion, ranking him Malaysia’s sixth richest. Earlier reports in the 90s put his wealth at somewhere between $7 billion and $9 billion.
“It’s hard to tell,” said a former employee at Usaha Tegas, the private company AK uses to inject his stake in many of his Malaysian businesses. “You can’t read the man. What we do know is that he’s extremely savvy with what he does. In most cases, you only read about it after it’s done and you wonder how he did it.”
The KLCC was one such deal. In 1990, AK bought the massive piece of land that served as Kuala Lumpur’s horse racing site for 110 million ringgit (when the Malaysian currency was at 2.5 to the dollar; at the time this tribute to AK was being written, the ringgit had dropped to around 4.4).
A key thing to note at the time of AK’s purchase was that the property was identified as agricultural land. Not too long later, he got it approved for industrial use and sold it to Petronas — with a view, of course, of building the twin towers there — for a whopping 681 million ringgit. It probably helped that Petronas, the national oil company, reported directly to the prime minister (who, of course, wanted the towers built) and that AK had long been doing business with the company as Malaysia’s first oil baron.
But it’s also true that while not a single brick had gone into the ground for the KLCC, AK had already pocketed 571 million ringgit — or nearly $282.5 million, at the exchange rates that applied back in 1990.
He used part of his windfall from the land sale to commission a third tower beside Petronas’ twin structures, calling the less opulent and shorter building Maxis (the name for what would eventually be Malaysia’s largest telco). The Maxis tower also housed the corporate headquarters of Measat (Malaysia’s first satellite service that would also feed into the country’s first cable TV with a 20-year monopoly). With licenses for oil trading, gaming and power generation, he was both admired and envied for being one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Mahathir administration.
“Critics of AK, of course, cried nepotism at the deals he won in Malaysia, saying he would never have got those without his good friend Dr. Mahathir,” said the Usaha Tegas employee. “All said and done, he delivered on things no else had. For that alone, he stands out.”
Standing Out By Standing Alone
The Live Aid ‘85 was one example of AK succeeding where no else had.
A year before that, Geldof of Boomtown Rats recorded the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas” with Ultravox’s Midge Ure and other British rock stars as a way to raise funds to feed famine victims in Ethiopia. Months later, US artists led by Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson came up with “We Are The World”. But Geldof wanted more, dreaming of a 24-hour live concert tribute staged from one end of the world to the other. The problem was the cost, which could run into untold millions.
Enter AK, a 47-year-old oil baron whom the artistic world had never heard of. He called Geldof on the phone and offered to pick up the tab on one condition — that his name be kept out of the whole thing. Apparently a little bored with the staid business of oil trading, AK had already formed by early 1985 Worldwide Sports and Entertainment with Michael Mitchell, one of the brains behind the staging of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Mitchell then spoke to Geldof and put up $750,000 in seed money and a $1 million letter of credit to get Live Aid ‘85 rolling.
The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
“In a world hungry for inspiration, Ananda’s role in the rock-relief movement … still shines as an extraordinary act of kindness,” Frankie D’Cruz of freemalaysiatoday said as he retold the Live Aid story after AK’s passing. “By quietly making a difference, he demonstrated that effective philanthropy doesn’t require headlines.”
In Malaysia, AK’s giving is largely orchestrated through Usaha Tegas’ “Yu Cai” foundation — which is Mandarin for “nurturing talent”.
Since 2004, Yu Cai has sponsored 100 students a year at Malaysian universities with twinning programs with overseas colleges. Other AK entities award annual scholarships ranging from $2,300 to $44,000 to Malaysian media and broadcasting students and relevant job placements thereafter. They also contribute to courses in acting, directing, and screenwriting for 48 students a year.
Those who contributed to his growth were also rewarded well. “When he hit his first billion dollars, fifty of the closest business partners, top managers and friends who supported him got a brand new BMW each,” said an accountant who was aware of the splurge.
From Arabs To Australians, AK Often Had His Way
The humanity in AK rests side by side with his ruthless business acumen, say those in the know.
Tatparanandam Ananda Krishnan, a son of immigrants from Ceylon (the old name for Sri Lanka), was raised in Brickfields, a working-class neighborhood in the Malaysian capital, and attended early education at Victoria Institution.
Winning a scholarship from the Colombo Plan sponsored by his parents’ ancestral country, he studied political science at Melbourne University before making his way to Harvard for an MBA — one of the first Malaysians to get into the world’s top Ivy. At his Harvard dorm, he befriended Saudi royalty, an alliance that brought him into the world of energy trading.
Founding Exoil Trading, a firm that dealt in oil trading concessions, AK was later called upon by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah — Malaysia’s finance minister in the 1970s — to restructure Petronas’ oil trading business, serving as a director of the state oil firm for two years in the mid-1980s. Some say AK practically ran and advised Petronas at one point because no Malaysian knew as much, or enough, about the oil game as he did.
While it was Razaleigh who brought him back from abroad and onboarded him to Petronas, AK’s real bonanza was winning the attention of Mahathir, who became prime minister in 1981. By the late 80s, the two had formed a bond of mutual admiration and trust, so much so that when Razaleigh and Mahathir became bitter rivals later, it was AK who brokered a peace deal that allowed the two to forgive and forget.
As D’Cruz of freemalaysiatoday puts it, AK “saw potential where others saw problems”.
And that wasn’t just in philanthropy but in almost everything he did. AK’s business dealings could fill reams of pages. His previous and current assets include three satellites and a related pay-TV service, power stations, ships, lotteries, horse-racing wagering, a Hollywood animation studio, the world’s largest indoor water park in Germany and stud farms in Australia.
While he had his way with most people and situations, not everything worked for him. His attempt to produce another “Malaysian Maxis” with India’s Aircell was wrought with problems as he and the venture faced accusations and investigations of corruption. At one point, he and his chief lieutenant Ralph Marshall were wanted in India and Indonesia — another country where things went awry — on fraud and other charges. Company officials denied any wrongdoing, but the two incidents brought embarrassment rare to the AK brand.
‘God’ To His Employees; ‘Quiet, Grateful’ Man To His Kids
It wasn’t surprising thus that a man as meticulous as AK would expect nothing less of his staff.
“When he calls you in for something, you better know your answers,” said an ex-employee, who requested the identity of the AK outfit he once worked for not to be disclosed.
According to this person, he and his colleagues codenamed AK ‘God’ not for nothing.
“Often, there’s little that he doesn’t already know about what you’re going to tell him. He will let you go on with your own adventure though, to see if it matches with what he has already learned.”
But the former employee also says that his ex-boss was “really a kind man”, not one who fires people simply because they were wrong.
“He believed everyone should learn from their mistakes. Yet, if you don’t know what you’re supposed to, he’ll skewer you against the wall in such a way that you’ll never wish to be there again.”
AK’s children, however, saw a quiet and grateful man, who spent his final months reflecting on the people he knew and the goodwill received during the near nine decades of his life, which were spent largely in Europe towards the end.
The globe-trotting entrepreneur had been ailing from a worsening lung condition although for the better part of the 2024 summer, it had been business as usual while he worked on his boat in Turkey and on other projects.
“He used to cycle in winter and swim in the ocean,” said a relative who requested anonymity.
But on returning to the Swiss Alps for the 2024 winter, it became clear that AK’s ailment was advancing rapidly, his children said in a statement.
AK has three children, including a son who’s a Buddhist monk in Thailand from his first marriage to a Thai princess.
There’s no indication that any of them will take over his empire.
Being “a private man”, AK never wrote memoirs, “kept his thoughts largely to himself” and was “certainly not for sentimental goodbyes”, his children — Tinge, Siripanyo and Idrani — said.
They added:
“Over the last few weeks and months, so much of his reminiscing revolved around the people he met throughout his life: How fortunate he felt to have made such good friends, and to have received so much goodwill and support over the years.”
Even in passing, AK seemed to take a higher ground than other mortals. His family arranged a wake in Malaysia but requested there be no drama or opulence. “Members of the family have requested that the wake be a quiet affair, and that no wreaths, flowers or garlands be given,” a notice said.
