KUALA LUMPUR: After months of market talk, Loo Hooi Keat finally made his exit from Konsortium Logistik Bhd (KLB).

In a filing to Bursa Malaysia yesterday, KLB announced that Loo has resigned as non-executive director. His resignation is no surprise as he had sold off his entire 14.75% stake in KLB in October following market talk that he was focusing on expansion plans in Pelikan International Corp Bhd where he has 23.32% equity interest.

Loo is also the president and chief executive officer of Pelikan. Pelikan has an 87.6% stake in Switzerland-listed Pelikan Holdings AG, and 69.4% in German-listed Herlitz AG, which gives it a strong presence in Europe, the US and the Asia-Pacific selling high-end stationery and office supplies.

It is said that Loo has been expected to exit KLB so he could focus on building Pelikan’s expansion plans into Herlitz that was concluded in April.

With the exit of Loo, the controlling shareholders of KLB are Bendahara 1 Sdn Bhd with a 56.5% stake, and pilgrim fund Lembaga Tabung Haji with a 9.52% stake as at Oct 22.

Loo first joined the KLB board in October 1992, a month after his former partner Mirzan Mahathir, the son of former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, joined.

It was believed that Mahathir had influenced the bailout of Konsortium Perkapalan, the predecessor of Konsortium Logistik, which had debts up to RM1.7 billion during the Asian financial crisis in 1997.

It was then that Petroliam Nasional Bhd’s (Petronas) unit and national carrier MISC Bhd stepped in and acquired Konsortium Perkapalan’s shipping assets for US$220 million (RM693 million). Mirzan exited the company in 2007.

KLB rose four sen to close at RM1.50 yesterday with 8,700 shares traded.

This article appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, December 9, 2010.