Grab Wants To Dominate When Merging With Gojek

Online ojek illustration (Angga / VOI)

JAKARTA - The news of the merger or merger of Gojek and Grab is increasingly being heard at the end of 2020. Grab has recently asked its CEO and founder Anthony Tan to become the de facto "CEO for life" when the two companies merged.

Given that the issue of the Gojek and Grab merger continues to heat up throughout 2020. It is likely that Grab will dominate the market and operate more than Gojek.

Quoting Nikkei Asia Review, Monday, December 28, this is also strengthened because Grab has a healthier financial condition, as well as its income compared to Gojek, its Indonesian rival.

It is known that two of the closest sources who are aware of the issue of this merger, Grab, are said to have added several clauses or agreements in which this will be a requirement for the merger of both parties.

The clause gave Tan large voting rights in the entity's companies, veto power over board decisions, and control over his own income. On the other hand, Grab is also discussing conditions such as who can appoint and who will be the new group CEO if Tan dies.

It is certain that if the conditions are approved and this merger occurs, Tan will have more power over the combined two decacorn companies in Southeast Asia.

However, this clause also raises investor concerns. However, Grab assured that the Grab-Gojek merger entity will also be carried out in a manner in accordance with IPO regulations.

Grab also believes that it has a supervoting stake, so that it will have more influence on its founders. Likewise with Gojek's Co-CEO, Andre Soelistyo who also received the same rights later.

Unfortunately, the two companies were reluctant to comment further on this merger issue. However, according to one source, until now there are still pending due to the share ownership structure of this merger.

This is because Gojek has asked for 40 percent of the shares from the merger, but according to Grab this amount is fundamentally too excessive.