Reduce commuting

Work near your home. Abolish stamp duty on purchase of home. Read this article.

Thought for the day - Power

"In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning and cruelty.": Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi - (1828-1910) Russian writer

Contributed by Ho Cheow Seng

Stop cheating

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Factors affecting the quantum of compensation

An investor who helped an elderly relative to get 100% refund of a large investment in mini-bond wishes to share the following information:

Factors affecting the quantum of compensation:
1. Vulnerable
It seems like the definition of vulnerable is a combinition of following:
- age > 62 yrs old
- uneducated
- non-english speaking

2. Tranche of your minibond.

Different minibond series are invested in different combination of assets. Some tranches invest more in corporate bonds such as those issed by GE Capital, hence their underlying value are worth more and likely to worth more if held longer, when conditions of the captial market improves. In return for compensation, you need to transfer your rights of the minibond to the FIs, hence FIs are more willing to compensate more for those series with higher underlying value, especially the ealier tranches of minibond, as they will be able to benefit in future, if any.

3. Written Evidence.

As minibond is considered to have high risk profile, if you have written evidence that your risk profile is on the contrary (most if not all FIs need to do some form of needs analysis for you and there is a section on risk profile), then the chances of mis-selling is very high. On this basis alone, you have a high chance of winning under Common Law (i.e. sue the FI in court).

4. Customer-centric

Some FIs with progressive leadership team are more customer-centric and more willing to compensate on the basis of good will.

IN SUMMARY

Whether you get compensation and how much depends mainly on the interplay of the above four factors (although some other factors may also be relevant).

 

Survey: Life in Singapore

How do Singaporeans feel about life in Singapore?

Survey

Here are the survey results.

Read this report.

Happy noteholders who received 100% compensation

I wish to pass this message to the 1,200 happy noteholders who received 100% compensation. 

You have spent a few months of agony and worry. You were uncertain about whether your money would be gone forever. 

You were deilighted to receive the recent letter or telephone call that you would be getting 100% compensation. Some of you wrote an e-mail to thank me for helping to achieve this happy outcome.

I wish to ask you to consider this possible situation. Suppose you had received a offer of partial compensation (which you consider to be insufficient) or a rejection. How would you have felt? There are 10,000 noteholders who are in this unhappy situation.

What can you do to help the other noteholders? I ask you to consider to express your support and solidarity for them. 

Perhaps, if you are generous, you can consider donating 5% of the amount that you received towards a fund to help them to get legal opinion and assistance? This is just a thought. If there are sufficient people interested to make this donation, I will get someone to organise it.

Role of private capital

Private capital thrives well in a booming economy. They make easy money. They even contribute towards creating bubbles in asset prices. As the prices keep going up, they make more money.

When the bubble burst, private capital is unwilling to take risk. This caused the collapse of the credit market.

Read this article.

The Governments have to step in to provide funds to re-capitalise the banks, to guarantee bank deposits, to guarantee the credits of borrowers (i.e. homeowners, small businesses). In this case, what is the purpose of private capital?

This has happened in USA, UK, Singapore and many other countries. 

What is the solution in the future? I believe that the capital has to be provided by the state (it is already happened) or by state-sponsored mutual funds. Ir should not be provided by private capital that are driven by short term gains.