"MBf MasterCard won't work unless it is linked to a financial institution, " says an industry watcher.
He started Leisure Holidays in 1987, without, he proudly says, any borrowings from MBf.
The market may also re-rate listed MBf Holdings and MBf Capital because of their cash-rich position.
MBf officials deny that the company is now negotiating with Public Bank, the parent of Public Finance.
Loy Teik Ngan, 36, is now chief executive officer of MBf Holdings, MBf Capital and MBf Finance.
Appeals by MBF for volunteers to help the Remploy staff have recently appeared in some local newspapers.
BBC: MP tables Commons questions over help for Remploy staff
Bank Negara has yet to grant MBf Finance Tier-One status, a requirement to be chosen as an anchor firm.
MBf Finance does not seem to have given up hope that it could survive as an independent entity somehow.
MBf had been talking to Mayban Finance, but the negotiations are officially off.
One bright spot: MBf's education ventures, which include Taylor's College and Garden School.
At MBf Capital, Teik Ngan is credited with launching MBf MasterCards outside Malaysia.
It paid 1.63 billion ringgit to buy general insurer Kurnia Insurans (Malaysia) Bhd. and took over MBF Cards Sdn Bhd.
His 153-branch MBf Finance has almost 10% of Malaysia's population as customers.
Sales of the Peugeot cars and Cherokee jeeps MBf assembles may slow as Malaysians cut big-time spending and the government tightens credit expansion.
In years past, MBf had wanted to acquire a merchant bank and other financial companies but could not get the needed permission either.
The group's stockbroking arm, MBf Northern Securities, can now buy securities only on a cash basis because it has not squared some trading positions.
When he left in 1995 to become chief operating officer of MBf Capital, Leisure Holidays had become a fast-growing operation selling time-share property across Asia.
Undeterred, Nathan says MBf is still looking to acquire a bank.
"He has said that he wants to build a great company, not just a big one, " says Patrick Nathan, a senior vice president at MBf Finance.
An economics graduate of McMaster University in Canada, Teik Ngan joined MBf as a credit officer in 1984, a year before the Malaysian economy went into a tailspin.
But MBf Finance apparently does not fulfill some of the other conditions of the central bank's CAMEL formula -- capital adequacy, asset quality, management efficiency, earnings performance and liquidity position.
Among the mooted alternatives: a new shareholder, a merger in which MBf retains control -- or the outright sale of the finance company at the most advantageous price to the Loy family.
Teik Ngan may try to look for a friendly party, perhaps a Malay businessman with ties to the government. (Tunku Abdullah, the brother of the current King of Malaysia, is executive chairman of MBf Finance and chairman of MBf Holdings and MBf Capital.) But many such bumiputra entrepreneurs already have problems of their own.
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