KCQ's for Amtek Holdings

Key Concepts and Questions

What Amtek Holdings does:

·       The principle activities of the company are investment holdings and the provision of management services.

·       I found that they have many core businesses in which they provide the marketing and distribution for. Some of these include:

-          Garment & apparels (Lee Cooper Jeans, Dickies, Pepsi and Ladybird)

-          Retailing (Harrods Brand)

-          Uniform Shoes (Amtek Shoes is one of the key suppliers of uniform shoes for the government.)

 Some key challenges for the company and how they are meeting these include and how the company has overcome these challenges:

·       The influx of cheaper apparels from countries, such as China and India, continue to test their determination to maintain a reasonable profit margin. To address this problem management have scaled down their operations by dropping non-profitable brands and now only focus on Lee Cooper jeans. This is the point of this assignment that I am finally starting to understand exactly what my company actually does. And I also found this quite funny because as I write this blog I am wearing a pair of Lee Cooper Jeans!  

·       The Amtek Group is also exposed to credit risks mainly from their receivables, cash and bank balances. I found that the way they minimise this credit risk is by dealing exclusively with reputable financial institutions. I have found this is prevalent in their regular updates on the company’s performance & corporate development via the form of media releases and press conferences.

·       World economy – the current growth in the advanced economies is showing some dismaying results, however, in spite of these uncertainties in the global environment, Malaysia has still managed to achieve a 4.3% growth increase for the year.

Challenges faced:

·       The Asian Financial Crisis in 1997

My observations:

I have found it extremely difficult to find much information on Amtek Holdings and do wish I had been given a different company to research, however, the challenge has certainly helped me to discover new ways to find the information I am needing. I am wondering if the reason for there not being much information has anything to do with the Asia Financial crisis or (as a fellow colleague suggested), perhaps in Asian countries they have a censorship of the internet making it impossible to find information online.