Malaysia’s Daim, Tycoon Who Became Finance Chief, Dies at 86

Ram Anand and Niluksi Koswanage
·3-min read

(Bloomberg) -- Daim Zainuddin, the Malaysian tycoon who twice served as finance minister in former premier Mahathir Mohamad’s governments, has died. He was 86.

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Daim was hospitalized in the Petaling Jaya suburb in Selangor and his funeral is expected to take place on Wednesday, his lawyer, Gurdial Singh Nijar, said.

Daim was finance minister from 1984 to 1991, and had a second stint from 1999 to 2001. He was seen as a key confidante to Mahathir, the country’s longest-serving prime minister, and helped him to develop his economic agenda.

“I have lost a close friend,” Mahathir, 99, said in a statement on X. “I am so sad.”

Daim, a Malay from the same village as Mahathir in the northern state of Kedah, was a lawyer turned businessman who Mahathir tapped for roles in his government at key points during his more than two decades in power. He turned to Daim to help Malaysia recover after the Asian Financial Crisis the year after sacking former protege Anwar Ibrahim from his government posts in 1998 in an important moment in Malaysian history.

Daim had a big influence on Malaysia’s corporate scene, including reorganizing the assets of the United Malays National Organisation, the dominant party in the coalition that ruled for most of Malaysia’s history since independence until it was ousted in 2018. Critics, including current Prime Minister Anwar, say that Mahathir and Daim made political patronage a feature of business in Malaysia.

Daim had a long history with Anwar as well as Mahathir. Both he and Anwar were members of Mahathir’s inner circle. At times Anwar and Daim were friends, at times foes and rivals.

In recent years, their relationship soured. After Anwar became prime minister in 2022, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission started graft investigations into both Mahathir and Daim. Anwar instructed the agency to carry out the probes, Bloomberg News reported in September, citing comments by the agency’s chief to its staff, according to three people familiar with the matter.

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Daim and his wife, Nai’mah Abdul Khalid, were charged in January for not declaring their assets as part of this probe. They pleaded not guilty. The cases are ongoing. That came after the MACC seized the Ilham Tower skyscraper owned by the Daim family in December. Anwar is pursuing “vendettas of the past,” Daim said in a statement in January. Anwar denies this.

The MACC’s investigation into Daim’s wealth is ongoing and the agency will get further instructions from the deputy public prosecutor regarding the next steps, a spokesman said in reply to questions from Bloomberg News on Wednesday. The agency will announce its decision later, he added.

“He should have been praised for his contributions,” Mahathir said of Daim in the statement on X. “But in the end he was scolded without reason.”

Daim was called to the English Bar in 1959. He later became known for his business deals in Malaysia and abroad. He formed a property firm in 1969 and developed two major townships in Kuala Lumpur, which he said in an affidavit cited by local media this year would be worth 26 billion ringgit ($5.8 billion) in terms of land valuation.

Daim bought his first bank, a French lender in Malaysia, in 1981. He later injected his equity in it for a stake in a local bank.

The government recognizes Daim’s “service and contribution to the country, especially when he was minister of finance,” Anwar said in a statement on X.

--With assistance from Netty Ismail and Kok Leong Chan.

(Updates with Anwar statement in last paragraph)

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