The Edge group behind news website

The Edge group behind news website

The Edge Media Group publishes Malaysia's leading financial weekly, The Edge, with a circulation of about 24,000, as well as a daily business newspaper. It also owns The Malaysian Insider.

The group's owner is businessman Tong Kooi Ong, who previously controlled Phileo Allied Berhad, a financial banking group.

Mr Tong was accused of helping to finance opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim after Datuk Seri Anwar was sacked as deputy prime minister in 1998.

He later sold Phileo Allied Bank to the government-controlled Maybank.

Mr Tong has also been under pressure to relinquish his publishing company, which he built into a stable of newspapers and websites, and which also holds a stake in business radio station BFM.

The Edge group bought The Malaysian Insider last year, a year after the Malaysian general election.

The news website had seen an exodus of most of its staff following the 2013 elections, during which some of its journalists complained of undue pressure over their coverage.

Two of its former editors started rival news site Malay Mail Online. The Malaysian Insider, launched in 2008, was ranked the 12th most-visited site in Malaysia in January.

It is the third best- read English news site after Malaysiakini and The Star Online.

Both The Edge and The Malaysian Insider have published many reports on the country's debt- laden state investment agency, 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), recently.

Some, like Malaysiakini and opposition stalwart Lim Kit Siang, noted that criticism of 1MDB, whose chief adviser is Prime Minister Najib Razak, has put The Edge Media Group under close watch from the authorities.

 


This article was first published on April 1, 2015.
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