KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 13): Oil and gas marine services provider Malaysia Marine and Heavy Engineering Holdings Bhd (MMHE) will appoint MISC Bhd’s vice president to be its managing director and chief executive officer, effective Mar 1, 2015.

According to MMHE’s filing with Bursa Malaysia today, Abu Fitri Abdul Jalil will be appointed to succeed the incumbent leader, Dominique Soras.

Soras’ contract of employment ends on Feb 28. He will also cease to be non-independent executive director from the board, by then.

Meanwhile, Abu Fitri will first be appointed as non-independent non-executive director on Feb 1. MMHE said such an arrangement is to facilitate a smooth transition of responsibilities.

Prior to MISC, Abu Fitri was senior general manager of Petroleum Operations Management in Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas), having joined the national oil firm since 1991.

MMHE’s (Fundamental score 1.4, Valuation score 1.8) share price has been on a downtrend since late April 2014, when it reached as high as RM4.07 per share, before it declined 67% to RM1.34 today, with a market capitalisation of RM2.24 billion.

(Note: The Edge Research's Fundamental Score reflects a company’s profitability and balance sheet strength, calculated based on historical numbers. A score of 0 means weak fundamentals and a score of 3 means strong fundamentals. Valuation Score, on the other hand, determines if a stock is attractively valued or not, calculated based on historical numbers. A score of 0 means valuations are not attractive. Vice versa, a score of 3 means valuations are attractive.)