Nazir Razak is currently the Chairman and Founding Partner of Ikhlas Capital and was more recently appointed as the Chairman of PLS Plantation in February 2021. He retired as Chairman of CIMB Group in October 2018 after a 29-year career with the ASEAN banking group. He served on the Investment Panel for the Employees Provident Fund (2002-2017) and the Board of Khazanah Nasional (2014-2018).

Nazir was recognised as Malaysia’s top executive/CEO several times and was the youngest recipient of Finance Asia’s ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ in 2009. He was awarded Euromoney’s ‘Outstanding Achievement Award’ in 2012 and was the winner of the prestigious ‘Asia House Asian Business Leaders Award’ in 2015.

An advocate of ASEAN economic integration, Nazir currently chairs the ASEAN Business Advisory Council (ASEAN-BAC) for Malaysia, which, in 2025, will take on the chairmanship for ASEAN.

Nazir graduated from the University of Bristol in 1988 and obtained an M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge in 1989. In 2009, he was the Chevening Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and in 2019, he was the Transformational Leadership Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government (BSG), Oxford University. He is also currently a member of the BSG’s International Advisory Board.