Risky investment products

This letter talks about the risky investment products that are being sold in the market. It is important for consumers to be savvy to avoid these products. Attend the talks conducted by FISCA to understand what are the products that you should avoid.

30% of Singaporeans are cynics

Hi Mr Tan,
This is a valuable article.
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/30-per-cent-of-singaporeans-are-%E2%80%98cynics%E2%80%99--study.html

As it stated "....Since the study did not find any significant relation between a cynic and demographic factors such as race, education and income, it means that cynics here cut across the entire cross-section of society...."  It will likely be another "put on hold" scenario.  Hard to expect changes from such report/research.....!

Eugene


MY VIEW
Singaporeans have learned, through the years, that their main source of information through the mainstream media, is not honest and not reliable, and have learned to be cynical. To correct this situation, we have to embrace honesty and fairness in presenting the facts, and not slant them to serve certain political aims.

Private bankers

Private bankers manage the wealth of people with more than US$1 million in assets and earn a fee for their services. The increase in the number of high net worth people means more business for private bankers. However, the supply of private bankers outstrip the demand, leading to high cost and thin margins for the banks. Some banks have started to trim down their numbers of private bankers.

A more important factor is the inability of the private bankers to create wealth, especially in an environment of global recession and falling asset prices. In good times, it is easy to create wealth during a bubble, but it is not real wealth. In bad times, the fictional wealth have to be paid back.

These high income jobs of private bankers have a bigger harm. They make the real jobs, e.g. teachers, nurses, policemen, factory workers - look unattractive. There are insufficient number of people willing to work in these essential services.

The challenges facing the world today - falling birth rate, high unemployment - can be traced to the growth of the financial services sector that takes away too much profit from the real economy. To solve these challenges, we have to start with finding the appropriate measures to control the excesses of this sector.

Ponzi demography

Hi Mr. Tan,

I came across this term, "Ponzi Demography" in some blogs with links to the original article. Thought you might be interested to have a read.

http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=8321

"According to Ponzi demography, population growth — through natural increase and immigration — means more people leading to increased demands for goods and services, more material consumption, more borrowing, more on credit and of course more profits. Everything seems fantastic for a while — but like all Ponzi schemes, Ponzi demography is unsustainable."

Hang Lian

Talks by FISCA

FISCA has three talks on financial planning and life insurance over the next 3 months. You can register for the talks here. http://easyapps.sg/assn/Org/Event.aspx?id=5

Here are the details of the Life Insurance talk. Apart from life insurance, it also explains the government insurance schemes.

The financial planning workshop (6 hours) also give details about investing in shares, REITS and ETFs.

Ask young people (e.g. your children or your friend's chidren) to attend the talks, so that they can make the right decisions right at the start of their career and avoid the bad mistakes!

Advantage of declining population

The writer points out the advantage of declining population - it re-distributes power from the owner of capital to the owner of labor, and forces employers to give better working conditions to the workers. It also gives a better life to the people - less crowded public transport and highway and more living space.

The rapid increase in population in Singapore in recent years has indeed worsened living conditions in Singapore.  It is a policy that is bad for the people.

http://www.populationpress.org/publication/2003-4-browne.html

The Holmes Report |The 100 most important in-house communicators in the world

The Holmes Report has researched an interesting list of the 100 Most Important In-house Communicators in the World. It is a fascinating compilation of 100 of the most senior corporate communications professionals in some of the world’s largest companies who are responsible for the reputation management of some enviable and challenging brands.

It’s also released the now seemingly mandatory infographic summarising the list (see the end of this post). Some of the key facts on the infographic include:

• Edelman is the most respected public relations agency, followed by Burson-Marsteller, Waggener Edstrom and Weber Shandwick.
• In 60% of the organisations responding to the survey, public relations has primary responsibility for social media, while in 20% responsibility is shared between several departments, including PR. Just 8% have social media led by marketing, with customer service and IT having the lead in 4% each, and the remaining 4% being elsewhere (can’t think where – legal or HR perhaps?)
• Everyone on the list has responsibility for hiring and firing PR agencies, but most are also primary decision makers on digital and social media agencies (79%), event management companies (50%) and sponsorship (46%). Just 25% have a primary role over advertising agencies.

About half of the list are based in the US, but many countries are represented including the UK. I’ve pulled out some of the UK-related names that I found interesting:

Lord Stephen Carter, Chief Marketing, Strategy & Comms Officer at Alcatel-Luncent in France and previously head of strategy for Prime Minister Gordon Brown after being CEO at Alan Parker’s Brunswick.

Sue Clark, Corporate Affairs Director at SAB Miller in London having previously been at Railtrack and Scottish Power.

Thomas Delabriere, Marketing Director at Innocent Drinks is interesting because he’s from one of the smallest companies on the list, but was brought in to bring a “dose of corporate heft” as he’d previously been at PepsiCo, Unilever and Danone.

Dominic Fry, Director of Comms & Investor Relations at Marks & Spencer having previously had similar roles at the Channel Tunnel, J Sainsbury and Scottish Power as well as various heavyweight corporate PR firms.

Pierre Goad, Co-head of Group Comms at HSBC in London.

Peter Henshaw, Group Head of Comms at BP has the enormous challenge of “rehabilitating BP’s battered reputation”. Intriguingly, he’s a lawyer by background and has previously held a variety of both legal and communications roles.

Gaye Hudson, VP, EMEA Corporate Comms for Oracle is unusual because she’s only responsible for EMEA whereas most people on the list have a global remit.

Howell James, Corporate Affairs Director at Barclays is another graduate of Downing Street having worked for two prime ministers – Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Company Secretary and Group Corporate & Legal Affairs Director for Tesco is another who spent significant time working for UK government before joining the corporate sector.

Lucas van Praag, Head of Corporate Comms at Goldman Sachs in London has the unenviable task of working on repairing the reputation of one of the world’s most pilloried investment banks.

Michael Prescott, Group Director of Comms at BT Group in London is the former political editor at the Sunday Times who moved into PR via a stint at Weber Shandwick.

Ben Stewart, Head of Media at Greenpeace in London is one of the NGO’s leadership team that is well placed to teach the corporate sector a thing or two about how to run effective communications and lobbying campaigns.

Michael Stewart, Partner, Global Director of Comms at McKinsey & Company in London has an enviable track record in CSR-related institutions such as the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum, the UN Global Compact and the Centre for Our Common Future.

Phil Thompson, SVP Global Comms at GlaxoSmithKline in London is a 15-year veteran of GSK having worked his way through a variety of marketing and public relations roles.

Keith Weed, Chief Marketing & Comms Officer at Unilever is a marketing professional who has sought to unify marketing, corporate communications and sustainability under his leadership. An interesting approach that appears to be at odds with what many other large corporations are doing.