I refer to the malaysiakini report Merged plantation giants will form formidable group .

Was Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak simply ignorant or was he lying when he said that the government supported the move by Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB) to merge Sime Darby Berhad, Kumpulan Guthrie Berhad and Golden Hope Berhad into a single largest oil palm plantation company in the world?

Just a day after his statement last week, PNB chief executive officer Hamad Kama Piah Che Othman said Synergy Drive Sdn Bhd - which is proposing the takeover of the three companies - 'is not our company'.

Najib so confidently said that PNB was behind the move but this was denied by Hamad Kama Piah, who added that PNB had not even seen the proposal.

So who really is behind Synergy Drive? How is it that this company is so powerful, both financially and by influence that it can take over three giant companies under the PNB, which is the government's investment arm. It is so powerful that it can propose the merger without even consulting PNB, the majority shareholder in all three companies.

Press reports have said that even the CEOs of the three companies did not know of the move and were taken by surprise when they were informed by CIMB at a brief meeting that this was happening.

If press reports are to go by, the proposal will lead to the biggest oil palm plantation company in the world. But surprisingly, the reports also say that Sime Darby Berhad will be in control of the merged entity.

But the fact is Sime Darby only has 80,000ha of oil palm plantation compared to Golden Hope's 200,000. Golden Hope is also far ahead of Sime Darby in terms of productivity and efficiency. Its average yield per hectare and oil extraction rate (OER) are also much higher than Sime Darby's.

So why is Sime Darby in the driver's seat. Once the merger exercise is completed, the plantation division of the merged entity will have a combined landbank of 600,000ha.

The other question, therefore, which begs an answer is: What will happen to the other business of Sime Darby and Guthrie? Will they be put into a separate entities to be run independently?