Usaha Tegas Sdn Bhd, the investment holding firm led by Ananda, confirmed his death today.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the demise of our chairman, T Ananda Krishnan, who passed away peacefully on Nov 28.
“He has made significant contributions to nation-building and the corporate world, and his philanthropic initiatives have touched many lives. We humbly ask that the family’s wishes to mourn in private be respected,” it said in a statement.
In April, Forbes listed the tycoon as the third-richest person in Malaysia, after hotel and real estate magnate Robert Kuok and Hong Leong’s Quek Leng Chan, with a net worth of US$5.1 billion.
A Harvard Business School alumnus, Ananda founded Malaysia’s second-largest mobile operator, Maxis Bhd, as well as broadcasting and media company Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd.
He also held a substantial stake in oil field services provider Bumi Armada Bhd through Objektif Bersatu Sdn Bhd.
He is survived by his son, Ven Ajahn Siripanyo, whose mother, Momwajarongse Suprinda Chakraban, is of Thai royal descent. Ven later became a Buddhist monk. Ananda also has two daughters.
Man behind ‘Live Aid’ concerts
Bloomberg reported that Ananda donated to a range of causes over the years, most famously teaming up with Irish rock star Bob Geldof to organise Live Aid in July 1985. The twin concerts in London and Philadelphia drew more than 150,000 spectators and 1.5 billion television viewers and raised US$70 million for famine victims.
Ananda had read about how Geldof, in 1984, recruited peers to record the 1984 song Do They Know It’s Christmas/Feed the World to raise money for famine relief.
“Instead of simply giving money to a charity, I wanted to invest it in someone who could raise large amounts of money,” he told Newsweek shortly after the Live Aid shows.
His empire was bludgeoned after a big bet on India’s mobile market foundered as a result of cutthroat competition and a regulatory probe into alleged phone-licence corruption. The cumulative losses: roughly US$7 billion.
Through his ups and downs, with billions won and lost, Ananda guarded his privacy and rarely gave interviews.
“I have heard some people say I have a low profile,” he once told a journalist. “Why should somebody be high profile anyway? 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?”
Bloomberg said underpinning his success was a long friendship with Dr Mahathir Mohamad, prime minister from 1981 to 2003 and 2018 to 2020.
The two men bonded in London in the 1970s. While Mahathir was in power, Ananda won numerous licences for telecommunications, satellite and broadcasting operations. And he got the nod to turn a racetrack area in downtown Kuala Lumpur into a massive city within a city, crowned by the Petronas Twin Towers — the world’s tallest twin buildings.
It is said he went into oil trading after meeting the former oil minister of Saudi Arabia in an MBA course at Harvard University in the mid-1960s, according to the Business Times of Singapore — a choice Ananda later would describe with ambivalence.
The Bloomberg report said this experience led him to help set up Petronas, Malaysia’s national oil company.