CORPORATE LEADER MIAN MOHAMMAD MANSHA

The Leader

It is a popular saying among the Chiniots that the

goddess of wealth is in love with the Chiniotis. But Mansha is perhaps being loved by both the goddess of love and lady luck since he has narrowly escaped

the misfortunes in the past and making the most of it in the future – like a true centurion.

(Sana S. Qazi)

proved to be. Continuous struggle, hard work and a faith so very firm in his Allah, that nothing on the face of this earth ever stopped him from

attaining the goodies that life had in store for him, are his secrets of success and he did attain the giddy heights of glory, for sure.

Mian Mohammad Mansha plans methods to overcome anything. He doesn’t think the usual

act but thinks out of the box. He has learnt from his failures and help others learn from his experiences. Be it his family members, his friends

or his employees, he has genuinely helped them to grow and flourish.

“My close friend became groups like ARY, a big Memon business whose ARY television and gold business is famous. Hussain Lawai who is a famous banker and Khanani and Kalia group, Hussain Dawood group- so I upgraded my friends from middle sized memon business families. Now the big families are my friends and partners. Today I am bigger myself also.”

(Mian Mohammad Mansha)

“I have had many lucky breaks. Lady Luck has always been on my side. New projects just crop up before

I stop doing the old ones”

(Mian Muhammad Mansha)

A transformational leader in the true sense – Mian Mansha engages with others and creates a connection which raises level of motivation and

morality in his employees. He is visionary and Intellectual. He has the charisma to get the work done bringing out the employees maximum capabilities. He is dominant, has the desire to influence, He is confident and has strong sense of moral values.

Mian Mansha could be categorized as a revolutionary leader in the corporate sector. He

has a strong sense of vision, mission and end- values leading towards a transcendent purpose. He believes ambition is all about energy and

determination and it calls for goals as well.

The qualities of a transformational leader as rightly

put forward by Noel M. Tichy and Mary Anne Devanna, or Bennis and Nanus, Mansha perfectly fits into each. He is an agent of change and

courage. He believes in openness, trust and faith in the followers. Honestly, integrity and decisiveness are his major strengths.

Transformational leader combined with dedication to his profession, experience and courage make

a great centurion leader, which Mr. Mansha has

He has a quick mind and God has chosen him as a Pakistani corporate destiny maker. Considering that the 61-year-old Punjabi plans to create

Pakistan’s first genuinely global corporate, with banking and insurance interests across Asia, the Middle East and beyond, he is remarkably down

to earth.

“Accomplishment is greater than ego. Luck and

timing is very important. I’m lucky in that I love my job, and so going into the office is all a joy to me. I’m now in my 60s, and big things I want to do.”

(Mian Mohammad Mansha)

Background

Mian Mohammad Yahya, Mansha’s father and his five brothers left their home in Kolkata, India, in

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1947. They moved to Faisalabad, near Lahore, and started the family’s cotton business. Mansha was born that same year. The brothers called their

cotton company Nishat Mills after Nishat Haroon, a grandson of the eldest brother. The Korean War of 1950-53 brought in a cotton boom as the

demand for the uniforms, bandages and tents greatly increased.

Mansha attended Sacred Heart School, a co- educational convent school run by nuns. He got enrolled for the sake of the academic standards; it

had nothing to do with religious aspects. He went to study accounting at Hendon College in London, returning to Pakistan in 1968, before getting a

degree because his father had developed cancer.

He married Naz Saigol; a former classmate from his hometown who was the daughter of an industrialist, Yusuf Saigol. It was partly an arranged marriage, as their parents were friends back in India. When his father died in 1969, Mansha was 22 then. He bargained with his uncles for Nishat Mill’s operations in Faisalabad rather than other factories, most of them running successfully in East Pakistan. This is where the lady luck started hitting on him, and ever since has always been

along with him. On the separation of East Pakistan, his uncles lost everything. Then Mansha became the CEO of Nishat Mills, which today has the nation’s

largest textile processing and sewing facilities.

Mansha grew as a textile entrepreneur and is also

a great name in the banking sector.

at the international level and make his company a multinational. He not only wishes to help Pakistan grow financially and economically but also wants

to see the people of Pakistan leading a successful meaningful life.

Mansha is also looking attempting to create the first Pakistani global corporate. He also aims at becoming the country’s largest power generator

and infrastructure provider. Mansha is also pushing into tourism: the first five-star Nishat Hotel will shortly go up and more will follow.

Mian Mohammad Mansha’s mission is to make his company’s the leader in their respective fields. He

did achieve it all. Nishat, Adamjee, DG Khan Cement and MCB all are the number one in their own fields. He is stretching his sectors of work. It is Pakistan that comes first for him rather than personal gains.

“I am aggressively restructuring my firm to create a new entity, tentatively titled Nishat Holdings. I will retire in the next 10 years, we’re creating a holding company – we’re doing the legal work right now – that we will control everything through. It will package everything into a single, bigger firm so that we as a corporation can equally become

bigger and better. I want my sons and my

professional managers to benefit from it all.”

(Mian Mohammad Mansha)

Mansha says: “I want to be the first Pakistani, like some of our

counterparts in India, to really go out and show that we Pakistanis can even be successful outside

Pakistan.”

Mian Mansha’s Vision and Mission

Mian Mohammad Mansha is a visionary leader. He looks at the broader aspect of any picture. He visions the impossible and makes it a mission to

achieve that. His vision categorically is to become the leading entrepreneurs globally, to take Pakistan

Ethics and Personality: Mian Mansha’s Leadership skills and style

Mian Mohammad Mansha had the prerequisites of

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being a creative leader. He has the desire, the determination and the drive.

Mansha is known to act as well as talk quickly but at the same time he is a keen observer and a great

listener. A leading executive close to the company adds: “Pakistan’s industrialists are quiet by nature. They tend to let their managers do the talking for

them. But Mansha lets his managers do the managing. He is a macro manager as well. He keeps a backseat but knows what is going on at every level.”

He is simple, honest and modest. He is above board and professionally runs his businesses. His board of

directors has qualified and experienced people who are professional and capable of producing the best. He doesn’t make his company a family venture but rather prefers merit. Even while hiring employees

the qualities, he looks for in them besides the knowledge; confidence is integrity, the passion to work hard, flexible and down-to-earth.

“I feel that my privacy and my businesses are managed professionally so it is those people who should be at the forefront in the media. There are lots of other people who can do this job even better.”

(Mian Mohammad Mansha)

professional and dedicated. “Mansha got a lot of flak from that decision,” says a former colleague.

“The SBP made a lot of noise about it, feeling that their power had been circumscribed, but ultimately there was nothing they could do. Few people could

have got away with that sort of impulsive behavior. He may be the only one.”

One of his executive rightly puts it as: “Maybe it’s his intuition, his vision, maybe his good luck, but one learns and respects his decision-making ability.”

Mansha has always been ahead of time in Pakistan. He was 15 years ahead of everyone else in banking

and cement, and again he is moving ahead in power faster than anyone else. He has a great ability of perceiving future themes and taking calculated risks that tend to work. He is an old man in a hurry.

Mansha isn’t a typically meeting-going executive. He makes deals on his mobile phone often while walking alone in a park. He portrays emotional intelligence. He says he saw poverty-born violence firsthand after he took over D.G, Khan Cement in 1992. One of his factories was in Punjab province in northeastern Pakistan. The quarry was in a tribal area. When Mansha inspected the site, local people

tried to shoot at him. He told the managers to give them jobs, even if the work was menial, such as lifting cement bags. He built the area’s first

medical facility. These efforts of his cut down violence and helped his business to grow. He is a family man and loves to spend time with his wife,

children and grandchildren.

He has ability to quickly and decisively make key internal changes, even to the extent of infuriating

Pakistan’s famously lethargic financial regulators. After he got into control he didn’t spare even his friends and family who were defaulters.

In May 2007, frustrated with the performance of the then-MCB chief executive and president,

Muhammad Aftab Manzoor, who had been at the position for seven years, Mansha acted swiftly. He fired Manzoor – “giving him 24 hours’ notice to

pack his bags and leave”. To his colleagues, this might appear as a ruthless streak: but to others it appears to be a sign of being unbiased,

“I am not in bed any later than10 o’clock. I don’t have a globe-

trotting life-style. I go with my family to London which is a great place and prefer to put my slippers and bounce my grandchildren on my knees.”

(Mian Mohammad Mansha)

Mian Mansha maintains a low profile and his people

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are guided to be the same. He opted to stay out of politics and concentrate on doing what he is best at doing that is his entrepreneurship skills.

He believes in good corporate governance and like a true leader he believes in transparency and accountability at all levels. He monitors each Nishat

group company by talking with 20-30 managers a few minutes everyday. He knows the bottom line by staying in touch through random calls.

“We will need to become more open and transparent, and that will travel down the company. [India’s] Reliance

Industries is a good model for this. It has great transparency, and that has truly brought out the value of the management that they have.”

(Mian Mohammad Mansha)

The acquiring of MCB was seen as a big mistake

Mansha was making in 1991 when Nawaz Sharif came into power. Later the Bhutto Government tried to nationalize it, but Mansha used all his

creativity and leadership skills to save MCB from nationalization.

Though at that point in time he went into exile and

came back in 1996. He worked hard on it to make it the most successfully running banks in Pakistan, and lately MCB was awarded as the best in Asia.

Mansha sold his shares to May Bank, the biggest lender in Malaysia. According to the researcher, this move was to help MCB gain foreign intervention

and thus making the nationalization difficult.

The magazine Euro money states that.

“It’s one of the great franchises in the world; it is really quite the strangest bank in the entire world, because one-third of its deposits are current account deposits, with an average of just $2,500 per account. It’s unique in the world – small customers stay with them, and they make sure they offer really good services that their customers would like. There’s a trust factor – a bond between them and their customers.”

MCB successfully sold $150 million worth of global depository receipts on the London Stock Exchange

in October 2006. This steady-as-she-goes attitude toward expansion is likely to appeal to investors in today’s climate. Mansha is no fan of the flighty

financial system that had brought in current credit crunch, or of the expansion-at-all-costs attitude of the banks that got us in this mess.

As mentioned above, DG Khan Cement Factory faced many problems at the time of its

establishment but it was Mansha’s emotional intelligent that helped the whole organization to run smoothly and reach the top in cement industry.

Main Challenges of the past and how Mian Mansha resolved them

The initial period was tough for Mansha when he started his career as CEO of Nishat Mills in 1971. But later he was successful in expanding the Nishat group to diversified fields. Nishat Group of companies now include: Nishat Textiles, Dera Ghazi

Khan Cement Company, Adamjee Insurance, and Muslim Commercial Bank. Mian Mohammad Mansha is on the board of 45 companies in Pakistan and

is one of the most powerful and influential persons in the country. He was awarded the Sitara-e-Imtiaz Civil Award by President Musharraf on March 23,

2004. Nishat Mills Limited is also the largest exporting entity in Pakistan.

Nishat Group having become the first Pakistani corporate to sell GDR’s on the main London bourse, some young MCB executive took the attitude: We’ve

done well, got the offering away, now it’s time to party. Mansha quickly squashed the idea and said to his young blood: “all we have done is to sell the

some papers, now we need to prove to our shareholders that we know what to do with it.”

Leaders of Pakistan 69

 

Mian Mansha’s one major decision or move that changed the nature of the company/ organization

Mian Mansha’s challenges of the future

Mansha expresses his future challenges, “I am very optimistic about the future of Pakistan. There are external problems afflicting us but there

are a lot of misconceptions about our country.”

He believes,

“The best way to extract Pakistan from terrorism and boost our sluggish economy, is to create more jobs and prospects for young people by throwing

open borders especially with India. I say let them come and invest with us. I am one of the few Pakistani entrepreneurs who believes the best way

to expand is to open our borders with India. There are people who are afraid of the competition from over there but our ports are cheaper for them at least – we have ports that are much quicker with better infrastructure and much cheaper, than India. We need a bigger market and more competition and they need the same.”

He is determined to provide the outside world,

particularly investors with a more positive view of his homeland. Pakistan appears to the outside world a country which is at war with itself and is

constantly in danger of fracturing.

Though the political instability in Pakistan is a

challenge to Mian Mansha. The loan recoveries has become difficult, Adamjee Insurance is also being affected due to the prevailing terrorism and

violence in the country. Textile industry has been hit by the recession and government policies and so did the Nishat group and to gain the same glory

back is a challenge for Mr. Mansha.

Besides the accession issues, it is the here and

now that interests Mansha. For a man getting on in years and in a hurry, he has plenty of life in him yet, and he clearly wants his legacy to be one of regional, even global success, and the consolidation

The one major decision Mian Mohammad Mansha actually took was the acquisition of the Muslim Commercial Bank. The focal point of Nishat Group is MCB today, the best financial service provider

in the country and Pakistan’s largest private bank. With cash of Rs. 60.7 billion ($780 million) at the end of June 2008 – a year-on-year increase of

more than 50% – MCB has also managed to outperform the Karachi Stock Exchange, not bad going in a year in which financial services companies

have been badly hit by recession around the globe.

But the big news for MCB was the sale of a 15%

stake, for $680 million, to May Bank. The Malaysian lender in August bought a further 5% stake in its new partner, for $213 million. Overnight, the deal turned MCB into a big player in the fast-growing Islamic banking and Islamic finance markets – key areas of growth for Mansha and his flagship lender.

“Alongside May Bank we are putting together a business strategy that will expand our customer

base in many countries – Russia, central Asia, the Middle East and Africa, we are even looking at acquiring a bank in either of Europe or the US.

May Bank has more capital and better technology but we have 7.5 million Pakistani expatriates living all over the world, and we have already applied

for a banking license in Toronto. We have a budget of around $1 billion to buy a bank as far a field as Brazil, and we are looking at potential banking

acquisition possibilities in the likes of Kazakhstan.” (Mian Mohammad Mansha)

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of his position as the country’s leading industrialist and entrepreneur – a sort of “Mr. Pakistan” figure- a centurion in the Pakistan corporate world, in

charge of the country’s first truly global corporation.

Mansha says:

“I lived for 17 years with my father working in what became the largest factory in Faisalabad, which is still called the Manchester of Pakistan. My

heart still beats strongest in textiles like my father, and we make yarns and fabrics and apparel for the likes of Gap, Levi’s, and John Lewis.”

Whom Mian Mansha considers his leader

Mansha does read book on Hughes along with biographies of John D. Rockefeller and Burmese

Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Mansha protests with a smile

“I’m nothing like Hughes. He was something of an eccentric. I have a very normal life.”

He said he idealizes his father Mian Mohammad Yahya. All the business tactics he knows and implies today, he has learnt them all from his father.

REFERENCES

Oolim Lee, Naveen A. Mang (January 2009), ‘Prince of Pakistan’, Bloomberg Market.

Elliot Wilson (October 2008), ‘Meet Mr. Pakistan’ Euromoney magazine.

Wikipedia, (2009), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Mian_Mohammad_Mansha.