Rosberg had just won the third consecutive driver’s title for the Mercedes Petronas F1 team the day before in Abu Dhabi, and was flown especially to meet and greet Petronas staff at its Kuala Lumpur headquarters.
His win also added to the constructors title Mercedes Petronas had won in October thanks to the dominance of Rosberg and teammate Lewis Hamilton in the F1 grand prix series this year.
But that is one positive in a year when Petronas has seen its group year-on-year net profit tumble 58% to RM7.5 billion as at the end of the third quarter.
According to the Nikkei Asian Review (NAR), this had resulted in an across the board drop in average realised prices for all its products.
It is just a continuation of the massive hit the company has been taking, like other oil and gas companies around the world, owing to the massive decline in crude oil prices that began in the second half of 2014.
Last year, crude oil prices on Brent, the group’s main benchmark, plunged to a US$52 average barrel price, which was almost half the US$99 average the year before. The decline has continued this year.
The man who led the hundreds of Petronas staff, who were having a welcome respite from work on a Monday afternoon, to greet Rosberg was president and group CEO Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin.
“Formula One works for our brand, it works for our products and it works for our people,” a jubilant Zulkiflee said of his company’s involvement in the prestigious auto race, according to NAR.
Zulkiflee took over the helm of Petronas in April 2015, at a time when the drop in oil prices had already made a severe impact on the company’s earnings, and in turn reduced the amount of money the company could pump to state and government coffers.
He took the necessary steps announcing a cut of up to about RM50 billion in capital expenditure over the next four years. This, after the company had been spending an average of RM58 billion annually between 2012 and 2015.
“We need to have a quantum change in the cultural beliefs of the whole group to be a high-performance company,” Zulkiflee was quoted as saying by a local daily during a visit to London in September.
Two immediate casualties on the Malaysian front from these cuts in spending is the downsizing exercise which saw 1,000 staff being made redundant earlier this year, and the end to F1 races in Malaysia from 2018.
Where the top motorsports event in the world is concerned, Petronas which has been sponsoring the event since the first race held at the Sepang International Circuit, will save RM300 million per year.
When it comes to staffing though, it is believed that further layoffs were on the horizon as part of Zulkiflee’s mission to transform Petronas into “a merit-based high-performing organisation,” as he told a press conference in August, without elaborating on the size and scope of future cutbacks, NAR said in its report.
But with an election year looming, being a state-owned enterprise whose employees are traditionally strong supporters of the ruling party, there is little likelihood that Petronas will take to reducing headcount.
Meanwhile, the burden on Petronas to deliver remains as great as ever, with Prime Minister Najib Razak calling Petronas the “goose that lays the golden eggs for the nation”, as recently as September.