Bad experience with land banking plot

Dear Mr. Tan,


Some years ago a good friend of mine purchased some UK Land Banking plots. She was so blinded by the opportunity that when I questioned it we fell out for a while. She could not believe that such opportunities could be allowed in Singpaore and advertised on the TV if they were not true. She was not particularly greedy in fact I found her to be a very kind and gentle person.


Like many of us she wanted an opportunity to help her get ahead in life and be secure. The upshot was she has lost a significant portion of her savings to a scheme that has no chance of success.


I felt ashamed that such things could happen in the UK. After investigating and contacting some UK local authorities I was horrified at the way these schemes are run. They are designed to have absolutely no chance of success and to extract as much money as possible from the unfortunate investor.


Unfortunately what i've also discovered is that defamation law makes it very difficult to criticise a scam unless it is almost 100% proved especially in Singapore. It seems the only way to prove a scam without time and huge resources is to wait for the company to fail.
Even then typically the company will restart 2 or 3 times under different names claim mismanagement by a single executive and take more money from their loyal customers.


SF

The Talent Myth

During the past decade, there was a belief that talents are important for the future of a business or a country. Common sense and practical experience were discarded in the "war for talent". Talent was richly rewarded at the expense of the ordinary workers. Here is an interesting story about a well known company that pursued this strategy to an extreme. It brings useful lessons of people who belief in this strategy.

Talent and fat bonuses

For the past decade, there was a prevailing thinking that talented people cerated wealth and should be remunerated handsomely with fat bonuses and share options.

There was no distinction between the type of wealth and how they were created. In many cases, the wealth was created on top of a big asset bubble in properties and shares. The "talents" in the property and financial sector earned huge remuneration and bonuses.

When the asset bubble burst, these are the sectors that had to be bailed out. But, the fat bonuses are kept by the so-called "wealth creators".

The sad fact is that we are now going back into another asset bubble, with the low interest rate and bailout using taxpayer's funds. This will not be sustainable, and the world is likely to face another financial crisis - unless the asset bubbles can be reined in. But, that would be very difficult, given the low interest rate in the world today. In the meantime, the business leaders will continue to take the fat bonuses.

Tan Kin Lian

A good settlement mediated by FIDREC

An investor told me that the FIDREC mediator was able to get the financial institution to buy back 50% of the Lehman mini-bonds at full value (less interest received). He retained the remaining 50% of the investment.

In my view, this settlement is fair and is in accordance with my suggestion that both parties (i.e. the distributor and the investor) should share the loss equally. Actually, the investor suffered a larger loss as the capital sum had been invested for a few years without any return.

Anyway, the investor was glad to receive this settlement and thanked me for advising him to go to FIDREC. I hope that the other financial institutions would make a similar offer to their investors.

Tan Kin Lian

Financial sector is too big and unproductive

Several top economists have commented that the financial sector has grown to be too big. They do not create any value, in terms of actual production of goods and services to improve the quality of life. They are a drain on the productive economy and take away the best brains in recent years. They create bubbles and led to the collapse of the financial system.

I agree with these views. You can watch a video of the speeches given by these top economists in the academic section of Temasek Review.

Dangers of Big Banks

Read this article.

Paul Volcker on Financial Innovation

Speaking to a group of senior finance executives, as reported in The Wall Street Journal on Monday, Mr. Volcker made his point even more forcefully. There is no benefit to running our financial system in its current fashion, with high risks (for society) and high returns (for top bankers). Most of financial innovation, in his view, is not just worthless to society – it is downright dangerous to our broader economic health.