KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 13): Petronas Dagangan Bhd (PDB) has appointed its head of retail business, Aadrin Azly, as the group’s new chief operating officer, effective Jan 1.

In a statement today, PDB managing director and chief executive officer Datuk Seri Syed Zainal Abidin Syed Mohamed Tahir said Aadrin has knowledge and experience of the PDB business at the grass root level, as well as breadth at various Petronas business value chain.

"He has been a key member in Petronas’ strategic studies that we conduct every few years, and has just returned from Harvard Business School after completing the Advanced Management Program.

"Aadrin is unconventional in his thinking and approaches; some of the efforts he has put in place take longer to generate visible results, and these he can continue to oversee within this new role as COO," Syed Zainal Abidin said.

A recipient of Petronas scholarship, Aadrin joined Petronas in 1999 in PDB’s Retail and Commercial businesses, as part of its Marketing Seeding Programme.

He then went on to lead various units at the Petronas Group level, including as head (analyst) in Oil Business, senior manager (gas) at Corporate Strategy, and executive assistant to the president and group chief executive officer. Before assuming his current role, Aadrin was the senior general manager of Strategy & Portfolio (Upstream).

Khalil Muri, currently the head of special projects under the Retail Business, will replace Aadrin as head of Retail Business effective on the same date.

PDB said Khalil has 22 years of marketing experience within the Petronas Group, ranging across petrochemicals, LNG as well as crude oil.

Shares of PDB closed up 66 sen or 2.61% to RM25.98 for a market capitalisation of RM25.81 billion.