KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Seri Shazalli Ramly — the corporate executive vice-president and regional chief executive officer (CEO) for Southeast Asia at Axiata Group Bhd — is being hotly tipped as a successor to Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) group CEO and managing director Tan Sri Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa, who is to leave the post this month.

According to sources, Shazalli is seen as the leading candidate to head TM. TM group chief financial officer Datuk Bazlan Osman is reportedly another favoured candidate to run the group.

Shazalli was appointed to his current post on Sept 1 last year as part of Axiata Group-wide transformation. Previously, he was the CEO of Axiata’s wholly-owned subsidiary Celcom Axiata Bhd since Sept 1, 2005, according to the annual report 2015 of Axiata.

Prior to joining Celcom, Shazalli was the CEO of Natseven TV Sdn Bhd, Malaysia’s seventh terrestrial TV station, a position he held for eight years since its launch in 1998.

Before that, Shazalli was in the fast-moving consumer goods industry, with Lever Brothers (1987-1993), followed by British American Tobacco (M) Bhd (1993-1996), both in Malaysia and the UK. He also served as Astro’s marketing director for two years where he pioneered the launch of Astro digital satellite services in Malaysia.

Zamzamzairani, 55, has led TM since April 25, 2008, succeeding Tan Sri Abdul Wahid Omar who went on to head TM International Bhd, following a demerger of TM’s mobile and fixed-line businesses. The exercise saw the group’s mobile and non-Malaysian businesses come under TM International, while the remaining TM comprises fixed-line voice, data and broadband services, and other telecommunication-related businesses.

Under Zamzamzairani’s stewardship, TM successfully rolled out the High Speed Broadband (HSBB) network in 2010, as well as introduced its Internet protocol television service, HyppTV, later the same year.

As at Dec 31, 2015, TM’s broadband infrastructure covers 53% of Malaysian households with approximately 2.34 million subscribers. HSBB is an RM11.3 billion public-private partnership fibre optic network infrastructure project.

Zamzamzairani has grown TM into a company with RM23.64 billion in market capitalisation, more than double of the RM10.94 billion value as at June 30, 2008.

TM’s share price has risen more than four times to close at RM6.29 yesterday from RM1.39 on June 30, 2008.