QPR Malaysian owned EPL football club

Loss-making Malaysia Airlines (MAS) has ended its multi-million ringgit shirt sponsorship deal withQueens Park Rangers, the English Premier League club owned by their former director Tan Sri Anthony Fernandes.

The reported RM18 million deal was initially set to last for two years after the flag carrier and AirAsia became joint jersey sponsors last September in a move that came just a month after the now discarded share swap between the two airlines.

The deal drew widespread criticism from business analysts and politicians from both sides of the divide with some warning that MAS, which later reported a record loss of RM2.5 billion for the financial year, was being dragged into AirAsia boss Fernandes' "football fantasy."

But the club announced on its website yesterday that Asia's biggest budget carrier will now be its sole shirt sponsor for the upcoming 2012/3 English football season.

"Queens Park Rangers Football Club is delighted to announce that AirAsia have signed a new contract as our Official Playing Kit Sponsor and Main Club Partner.

"AirAsia initially announced that the airline will be the Official away and third kit sponsor of QPR for the 2011/12 season. The relationship has developed and grown over the past season in the Premier League, and it was a natural progression to become the full kit sponsor," it said.

Previously, MAS's logo was emblazoned on the home jersey of the team that Fernandes purchased a two-thirds stake in for RM220 million and called a marketing vehicle for the two airlines which had just signed off on the share swap the week before.

“This sponsorship is the first major initiative of our new brand and marketing strategy that would see important advertising money spent on boosting our top line. This is a key component in our drive to regain global market share, profitability and pride for the people of MAS,” MAS executive director Mohammed Rashdan Yusof had said last September.

State asset manager Khazanah Nasional Berhad had swapped 20.5 per cent of MAS stock for a 10 per cent stake in Asia’s biggest budget carrier last August 9.

The swap enabled AirAsia bosses Fernandes and his partner Datuk Seri Kamaruddin Meranun to sit on the MAS board and ostensibly help turn it around although Khazanah has denied that AirAsia was bailing out MAS.

But Putrajaya aborted the tie-up just nine months after it was hailed as the best way to save the ailing national airlines, which has gone through at least two business turn-around plans in the past decade.

Sources told The Malaysian Insider the Najib administration's insistence to ensure no job cuts in MAS before the next general election and workers unhappy with AirAsia executives managing the national carrier had all but made sure the pact would not take off successfully.

The unwinding of the share swap will be cashless and based on the same swap ratio of 2.05 based on the prices when the share swap was announced in August 2011, where MAS was valued at RM1.60 per share and AirAsia’s share at RM3.95.

The Malaysian Insider reported as early as March that the government was having a relook at the share swap and was considering a special entity to take MAS off the hands of its then main shareholders, Khazanah and Fernandes' Tune Air, after the shocking losses reported earlier.