Special treatment for Minibonds

There is a difference between Minibonds and the other credit-linked notes (i.e. Pinnacle Notes, High Notes).

For Minibonds, the credit default swaps did not fail. Only the swap counter-party (i.e. Lehman subsidiary) failed due to the liquidation of Lehman Brothers. PriceWaterhouseCoopers was appointed to arrange for the underlying assets to be released from the swap counter party and tranferred to another investment bank to handle the settlement.

For some notes, such as High Notes 5, Lehman Brothers was named as a reference entity for the credit default swap. The failure of Lehman Brothers caused the entire investment to be worthless.

For the Pinnacle Notes, the failure of a certain number of the underlying assets will cause a substantial or total loss of the investments. The investors have to wait and hope that these underlying assets do not fail. If they do, the investments will also be worthless.

It is not possible for any action to be taken to save the investments in the Pinnacle Notes, except to sell the notes to another party who is willing to take the gamble that it will not fail.

Different series of each credit linked notes are invested in different underlying assets and have different structures. It is difficult to make a general statement regarding these notes.

The Minibond class actions, led by Conrad Campos, are mainly to sue the distributors for failing in their duty to give proper advice to the investors. This is a separate matter from realising the value of the underlying assets.

For the same reason, the Hong Kong settlement only covered the Minibonds and not the other credit linked notes.

Tan Kin Lian