This role is for one of PEMANDU Group's entities - PEMANDU Capital.
PEMANDU Capital invests in and acquires Malaysian small and medium-sized enterprises — taking control positions where owners are ready to transition, and minority positions where good businesses need capital to grow.
The most compelling opportunities rarely emerge through a formal banker-led process. Instead, they arise through trusted relationships: an owner considering succession without a clear successor, an operational company whose growth is constrained by working capital, or a family-owned business quietly evaluating its options. We are seeking the individual who can identify and engage these situations at their earliest stages.
This is a build role. You will own the front end of the investment process, from market-mapping and relationship development through initial qualification and investment thesis formation. You will be actively involved in deciding which industries to hunt in, mapping who owns what, opening the conversations, and holding the relationships over the years it can take for an owner to be ready. You will not inherit an investment funnel pipeline. You will be building one.
What you will do
Build proprietary deal flow
- Generate acquisition and investment opportunities directly from owners, ahead of any intermediated process.
- Build and activate a referral network spanning SME bankers, accountants, advisers, industry associations and family-office contacts; and convert these relationships (existing and new) into a qualified pipeline from day one.
Map industries and identify succession situations
- Select and prioritise sectors on a clear investment logic: fragmentation, resilient demand, ageing ownership and scope for consolidation.
- Build and maintain the target universe within each sector — who owns what, how it is financed, and what would move it — as living intelligence that directs your outreach.
- Use that map to spot early succession signals — retirement, no next-generation successor, divergent shareholder intentions or partnerships coming apart — and handle these conversations with the discretion they demand, positioning PEMANDU Capital as a credible steward of the business.
Identify capital-constrained growth companies
- Find businesses with real demand but no headroom to serve it, and read the signals to separate a capital problem from a business problem.
- Position minority growth capital where control is not on the table, recognising where it may open a path to control later.
Build owner relationships and maintain the pipeline
- Own each relationship from first contact to signed engagement, and run a disciplined, visible pipeline for the investment team.
- Prepare screening notes and initial theses, hand over cleanly to execution, and feed market insight back into sector strategy and pricing.
Who we are looking for
Experience
- At least five years in a role that put you across the table from SME owners and decision-makers.
- We are particularly interested in SME and commercial banking relationship managers. If you have spent years lending to Malaysian SMEs, you already know which owners are looking for growth capital, which are hitting a financing ceiling, and which will eventually need to sell. That knowledge is the core of this role.
- Also welcome: corporate finance and M&A advisory, private equity or venture origination, business development in a group with an acquisitive record, or SME advisory in a professional services firm.
- Sound commercial and financial judgement — you can read a set of accounts, form a view on quality of earnings, and tell a good business from a good story.
- Evidence of having established an active network of Malaysian SME owners, founders and their advisers.
- Fluency in English and Bahasa Malaysia. Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese or Tamil is a real advantage in this market.
How you work
- Go-getter. You are proactive and self-directed; you generate your own leads, create introductions and set your own pace.
- Comfortable without structure. You are joining early. Processes, templates and playbooks are things you will help build, not things you will be given.
- Strategic and intellectually curious. You ask enough questions to understand how a business really generates its income, where its constraints lie, and how we can help create the value for the business.
- Sharp eye for opportunity. You notice what others walk past — the offhand remark about a son who went into a different field, the plant running at capacity, the supplier who quietly stopped bidding.
- Credible with owners. Founders talk candidly to people they trust. You earn that quickly and you protect it.
- Persistent and patient. The best opportunities take years to ripen. You keep the relationship alive through the wait.
- Discreet. You handle sensitive family, ownership and financial information with complete integrity.
Why this role is worth your time
- You own origination. This is not a support function feeding someone else’s pipeline — it is the front end of the investment platform, and it is yours.
- Your network becomes an asset, not a by-product. The relationships you have built over years of banking SMEs turn directly into transactions.
- You shape the strategy. Where we hunt and what we chase will be materially influenced by what you find in the market.
- You work alongside PEMANDU’s transformation practitioners, with visibility of businesses across the Malaysian economy.
What success looks like
- Opportunity Quality: a credible pipeline of directly sourced opportunities that meet the agreed onwership, financial, strategic and value-creation criteria.
- Access: demonstrate ability to reach and engage founders and controlling shareholders directly, particularly opportunities not yet in a formal sale process
- Market Intelligence: develop a continually improving view of priority sectors, ownership structures, financing positions and constraints, and potential catalysts for engagement
- Conversion: measurable progression down the funnel — first contact to qualified opportunity, qualified opportunity to term-sheet discussion.
- Pipeline quality: an accurate, current pipeline the investment committee can act on without rework.
- Network build: a referral base that produces repeat introductions rather than one-off leads.