Las Vegas Sands secures US$2b capital funding, remains committed to Singapore project

Las Vegas Sands secures US$2b capital funding, remains committed to Singapore project

By Wong Siew Ying,

SINGAPORE: Las Vegas Sands said Tuesday it has secured over US$2 billion in capital funding commitments to avoid violating loan agreements.

President and Chief Operating Officer William Weidner said in a conference call that Sands expects to close the transaction by the end of the week.

He continued to say that there will be some changes to Sands’ overseas resort developments. It will stop construction work at two sites in Macau’s Cotai Strip, pending project financing arrangements.

Mr Weidner said Sands hopes to have an agreement with a major Chinese bank within the next three to six months.

Sands will also suspend the building of its St Regis Residence luxury-condominium project in Las Vegas indefinitely.

The operator said it expects to save US$1.8 billion by delaying and curbing plans for those projects.

However, Sands said it remains committed to its Marina Bay Sands project in Singapore, and expects to open the resort by late 2009, according to plan.

Sands said it expects a significant return on capital from the Marina Bay Sands resort project. It added that the current capital market conditions will not significantly impact the integrated resort development in Singapore.

Sands also released its third quarter financial results overnight. It narrowed its net loss to US$32.2 million, compared with US$48.5 million a year ago.

Sands said this is due to increases in operating income and an income tax gain. Revenue increased by two-thirds to US$1.1 billion.

- CNA/yb

Source : Channel NewsAsia - 12 Nov 2008

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Singapore businesses say cutting jobs could harm branding efforts

Singapore businesses say cutting jobs could harm branding efforts

By Desmond Wong, 

 
 
S’pore businesses say cutting jobs could harm branding efforts
 

SINGAPORE: The current economic downturn is forcing Singapore companies to consider all measures to stay afloat, including slashing jobs. However, other firms believe that retrenching staff may actually cause more harm than good.

They said their employees are critical when it comes to developing and maintaining a strong brand, which can help companies ride out difficult times.

Companies which have poured time, money and effort into developing their brands tend to place a high value on the employees who have contributed to the brand’s success. And they are reluctant to let any of their staff go just to save costs.

Dr W.C Cheng, executive chairman, Thomson Medical Centre, said: “You have to keep your good people - the people that make the brand good. These are always being competed against, pinched away.”

Companies said that if they lose their staff, they will lose the service offerings that strengthen the brand.

Instead of cutting staff numbers, some firms are even seeking to upgrade the skills of their staff. They hope this will help give them an edge once the economic downturn is over.

Nelson Ham, director, DN Hybrid, said: “We’ll probably try to send them for enhancement courses, so that we’ll be able to take up more challenging jobs that other contractors would probably not be interested in.”

The companies were speaking on the sidelines of the announcement of the finalists for this year’s Singapore Prestige Brand Awards, organised by the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises on Tuesday.

44 firms have been shortlisted for four categories of awards and the final overall winners will be announced in December. - CNA/vm
Source : Channel NewsAsia - 12 Nov 2008

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Economy to shrink 2% next year: Morgan Stanley

Economy to shrink 2% next year: Morgan Stanley 

Big drop from its earlier tip of 0.2% growth; global forecast also cut
 
By Fiona Chan 

SINGAPORE’S economy may shrink 2 per cent next year as it suffers from a worse-than-expected global recession, Morgan Stanley predicted yesterday.
This estimate is a drastic cut from the investment bank’s previous tip of a 0.2 per cent expansion, and marks the most bearish view so far for growth next year.

Full-year growth has not dipped below zero since the dot.com bust in 2001, when the economy shrank 2.4 per cent.

Morgan Stanley also slashed its projection for global growth - from 2.5 per cent to 1.7 per cent - and lowered growth forecasts for several countries.

‘The vicious loop of rising credit defaults, shrinking risk capital pool, slowing growth and rising unemployment is unveiling the possibility of deeper-than-expected recession,’ it said.

On the bright side, the consensus at the three-day Morgan Stanley Asia Pacific Summit, which opened at the Mandarin Oriental yesterday, was that this slowdown is not going to turn into the second Great Depression.

‘This time around, policymakers reacted at a much earlier stage,’ said Morgan Stanley’s co-head of global economics, Mr Joachim Fels, a member of a panel examining the global outlook.

‘We’ve already seen very aggressive responses from policymakers…no bank is allowed to fail, unlike in the 1930s.’

Mr Fels said he expects the slowdown in the United States and Europe to bottom out somewhere in the middle of next year, thanks to the coordinated monetary policy action and a massive fiscal package expected when Mr Barack Obama assumes office as US president.

‘Mr Obama’s fiscal stimulus will probably kick in in the first half of next year.’

The effects of policy actions so far have been blocked somewhat by the paralysed financial system, but now that governments are offering more liquidity to the banking system, they should soon filter through to the real economy, he added.

But the recovery expected in 2010 is likely to be a ’sub-par’ and ‘tepid’ one - payback for the large fiscal injections now.

‘Consumers will offset increased public debt by saving more,’ said Mr Fels. ‘There will be much slower economic growth than we have been used to.’

The crisis will also take its toll on Asia as the cost of capital spikes and export demand plunges with the world’s major developed economies in a recession.

Likely to be worst hit are South Korea, Australia, Indonesia and India, said Mr Chetan Ahya, a managing director and India and Asean economist at Morgan Stanley. These four economies are running current account deficits and have seen loans grow strongly relative to their economies, making the credit crunch more painful for them, he explained.

In a separate event at the summit, Harvard University professor Niall Ferguson also said this crisis is ‘not the Great Depression, just a big recession’.

‘I don’t think we will see unemployment in the US reach 25 per cent and output collapse 30 per cent,’ he said. ‘We have learnt that we cannot let generalised banking failures happen.’

Prof Ferguson also argued that the US would not lose its place as the world’s economic superpower despite this crisis being ‘made in America’, a reference to sub-prime mortgages that went bad.

The US has the fiscal power to ‘throw US$2 trillion (S$3 trillion) at the problem’ while Europe is suffering more. Also, the US has a symbiotic relationship with China - one the spender, the other the lender - that will weather the crisis.

 
Source : Straits Times - 12 Nov 2008

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We’ve taken a hit but we will overcome

We’ve taken a hit but we will overcome 
DBS chairman says crisis will spark changes to the way the bank operates 
By Ignatius Low, Money Editor 
  
On the High Notes 5 debacle, Mr Koh says he is very proud of the tenacity of the people in DBS in the face of adversity, and that the experience has brought them together more strongly than he has seen in the past three years. — ST PHOTO: DESMOND WEE

THE financial landscape has changed irrevocably and things will never be the same again.
That is the first thing DBS chairman Koh Boon Hwee tells you as he starts speaking, and it is a line he will repeat at least 10 times over the next hour.
He wants you to remember it, because it will dictate the bank’s strategy going into the global economic downturn and the way it deals with customers and staff in future.

For example, it was one of the main reasons why DBS is cutting 900 jobs - or 6 per cent of its workforce.

A hiring freeze was already in place and wage cuts had been considered. But this crisis required more drastic action.

‘This is not a cyclical event for the industry where, after a while, we bounce back and everything is normal,’ says the corporate titan.

‘The change in the way that financial institutions operate is going to be permanent. A wage cut is a temporary solution because you must eventually put it back.’

What are the earth-shattering changes that have permanently altered the way banks operate?

Mr Koh reels off three - the growth of derivatives that allowed tremendous leverage, the securitisation of loans and an abundance of liquidity and cheap funds.

All three were factors which had driven the financial sector’s growth in recent times, he explains. But they will now come under greater scrutiny, forcing changes in the industry.

So making the job cuts was ‘not an easy decision’, Mr Koh says. Especially since the jobs lost are not coming back.

‘The easiest thing to do is not to do it. We already have the challenge of dealing with High Notes 5, why take this on at this time?’

But he says that the board and senior management needed to recognise that their job is ‘not to dwell on the past or just deal with the present, it must be to position the bank for the future’.

The decision was also influenced by labour laws in the various countries that DBS operated. Pay cuts would be felt most in Singapore where wages are more flexible, adds Mr Koh.

Yet another key piece of the puzzle was identifying where the bank can be more efficient and productive - a theme insiders say Mr Koh has been focused on since becoming chairman in early 2006.

‘The way the organisation has developed, there are certain things that no longer need to be done,’ he says.

‘When things are good, the nature of organisations is that duplication and overlaps develop. You can no longer afford that and there are some businesses which you know aren’t going to come back.’

What businesses are those, you ask.

‘Ah, that, I’m not telling you!’ he says, laughing.

The boardroom veteran turns dead serious when he talks about the recent High Notes 5 fiasco that the bank has become embroiled in.

About 1,400 investors sank $103 million into High Notes 5, a structured product which DBS issued and sold. The product was linked to Lehman Brothers and when the investment bank collapsed, the investment became worthless.

Some are alleging the products were mis-sold to them by relationship managers who never explained the risks fully.

‘We have learnt something from this and I believe that we will do things differently. Not all of it is going to be popular,’ he says.

But he draws the line at other suggestions for change, like blanket rules that completely ban the sale of some investments to ‘vulnerable’ investors who are elderly or lowly-educated.

‘Using indicators like age or education is not particularly effective,’ he says.

‘I like to think that when I’m 62, I can still invest without somebody telling me that when I’m past a certain age, I can’t.

‘And some very successful business people who are extremely astute never made it past secondary school or college. Are we going to tell them, because they have only 10 years of education, they are not qualified to do this?’

Neither is he supportive of a nationwide crackdown on relationship managers and sales targets in banks that some have blamed for hard-sell on the ground.

‘I think selling is something that happens in all businesses. There is not going to be an easy substitute for having quotas for salespeople for any kind of product, whether you sell computers or automobiles,’ he says.

‘You walk into a shopping mall or even food joints and you are always being besieged by salespeople. But you can’t totally check your personal accountability at the door and say that because I was being sold, I took it.’

Mr Koh warns that cracking down too hard on the sales process could prove bad for Singapore as a financial centre, if Singapore says no and financial innovation happens elsewhere.

‘We will always be in the backwaters, we will sit there and wait for people to come to us,’ he says.

‘Well, the world is not going to beat a path to Singapore’s door. I think it would be wrong to be so blanket about it, for Singapore and for our banking industry.’

When asked about the damage that the High Notes 5 fiasco has dealt DBS’ reputation and whether in retrospect, the bank should not have sold the product, he cedes little ground.

‘We don’t like the fact that our customers have lost money, no one does,’ he says.

‘Are there individual instances where we could have done better? The answer is yes, and we will make restitution.’

What is not correct, says Mr Koh, is to simply assume that all relationship managers are irresponsible, or that they all set out to mislead customers.

‘Many of our people believed in the products at the time that they were launched because many DBS staff members bought the same products.

‘The bank believed in the product because we took the customers’ money and invested it accordingly.’

Mr Koh also urges perspective.

‘In the month of September alone, the loss on the Singapore stock market was $95 billion. In October, $125 billion.

‘So the crisis is personal to us because our customers have been affected, but this crisis is also very broad, because it affects almost everyone across the board.’

He saves a sharp retort for rivals like OCBC Bank, whose CEO was recently quoted as saying that unlike DBS, it had deliberately refrained from selling structured products like Lehman Minibonds to the mass market.

‘In hindsight, all of us should have known better,’ he says. ‘When DBS issued its preference shares, we made a decision to keep it to only institutional customers because we were concerned that the product may not be suitable for retail. I think we were criticised for that.’

Both OCBC Bank and UOB sold preference shares to retail investors, in the wake of DBS’ refusal to.

‘Today, corresponding issues are trading 10 to 15 per cent down, but no one’s come back to vindicate us for the decision we made,’ he notes.

Indeed, Mr Koh stiffens with pride when he talks about the way the bank has handled the High Notes crisis.

‘You know, an event like this either tears the organisation apart or gels the team. I’m really extremely proud of the people in DBS,’ he says.

‘First of all, we have tried to deal with the issue in as open and transparent a manner as possible. We have held open forums for people to come. As far as I know, we are still the only ones to have done that.

‘Many more of DBS’ staff handle customers face-to-face and over the telephone. I can tell you that they’ve taken some abuse, and yet our people have remained calm throughout.’

He says the experience has brought people together more strongly than he has seen in the past three years.

‘The thing I’m proudest of is that I observe a tenacity in our people in the face of the adversity that we are facing. I observe a degree of perseverance which I think can make us all proud.’

Still, the public backlash is a lesson not lost on DBS.

‘People in Singapore hold DBS to a much higher standard of accountability. And we are deeply appreciative of the fact that there is this emotional commitment from the people of Singapore to DBS,’ he says.

‘We are just going to have to work extremely hard to re-earn their trust. We’ve taken a hit but we will overcome.’

Career highlights
MR KOH BOON HWEE, 58, started his career at Hewlett-Packard in 1977 and rose to become managing director in Singapore by 1985. He ran the Wuthelam Group for most of the 1990s, where he gained a reputation as one of the country’s most astute corporate leaders.

He became chairman of DBS Group Holdings in January 2006, replacing Mr S. Dhanabalan.

He is married with four children.

Glossary
THREE factors have permanently altered the financial landscape:
DERIVATIVES

Complex financial instruments whose value rely on an underlying asset, such as a stock, bond or currency. They also allowed investors to ‘leverage’ their investments - gamble a small amount for a larger return.

SECURITISATION

Packaging traditional bank loans such as mortgages into bonds and other instruments that are sold to other investors.

LIQUIDITY

A financial term that means the amount of capital, or money, that is available for investment. This is abundant usually when interest rates are low.

——————————————————————————–
On Lehman’s demise

‘As recently as 12 or 15 months ago, the financial landscape was very different. Interest rates were low, the economic outlook was extremely positive and customers were hankering for higher-yielding products. Who could have known that a bank like Lehman - 158 years old, A-rated and 20 times the size of DBS - would go under?’

On going forwards, not backwards

‘Will we continue to innovate on new products? I think we must. Will we be more stringent for retail? We obviously will. Let’s assume that DBS were to crawl back into its shell and say we never want to handle investment products, there will be other banks who will do it. And over time we’ll get smaller and smaller relatively, and if you get really, really sleepy, then you must by definition disappear.’

 
Source : Straits Times - 12 Nov 2008

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Marina Bay IR is Sands’ top priority

Marina Bay IR is Sands’ top priority 

Tourism board says Singapore has several options should project go wrong 

By Lim Wei Chean 

EMBATTLED casino operator Las Vegas Sands (LVS) said yesterday it was going ahead with plans for the Marina Bay integrated resort, but will suspend projects in Macau and the United States.
It said the multibillion-dollar resort and casino project will open partially at the end of next year.

Calling it ‘probably the most important project’ in the LVS portfolio, Sands president and chief operating officer William Weidner said the Marina Bay project offered ‘terrific returns on investment’.

He was speaking during an earnings conference call from the US yesterday.

Despite the LVS pledge, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) said last night that should things go wrong, there were a number of options available under the terms of its agreement with Marina Bay Sands.

Responding to queries, a board spokesman said that if the project faced financial difficulties to such an extent that it was wound up or a receiver was appointed over its assets, the STB could step in and ‘resume possession of the land, the IR and any other structure on the land, and deal with them as STB sees fit’.

On its part, LVS was upbeat about its prospects and Marina Bay yesterday.

It said it had secured US$2.14 billion (S$3.22 billion) in capital-funding commitments, a move analysts said was reassuring to investors who had earlier feared LVS was doomed to go under.

Sands’ billionaire chief executive Sheldon Adelson also reiterated his commitment to the Singapore project yesterday.

He said: ‘As part of my visit to Singapore last week, I assured the Government we were very committed to the success of Marina Bay Sands and would have the funding necessary to complete this development.

‘That is exactly where we stand today.’

But LVS admitted yesterday that it will not be able to open the entire integrated resort at the end of next year after all.

First to open will be two out of three hotel towers, a portion of the shopping mall, most of the convention space and the casino, said LVS executive vice-president Bradley Stone. Other facilities, including an iconic sky park, will open in early 2010.

He said the project was among the company’s crown jewels given the low tax rates, high number of days visitors are projected to stay, and the benefit of operating with only one competitor - the Resorts World Sentosa complex.

Marina Bay Sands, with 1,000 gaming tables, is expected to turn an annual operating profit of US$1.26 billion by 2012.

LVS posted a worse-than-expected net loss of US$32.2 million, or 9 cents a share, for the third quarter. In the same period last year, it posted a loss of US$48.5 million, or 14 cents a share.

Mr Adelson said the news that it has secured capital-funding commitments should put to rest talk that the company is in danger of going belly-up.

But LVS is not out of the woods yet.

Its decision to suspend construction of its Macau development at the Cotai Strip was taken to conserve cash and avoid violating terms of some American loans that could set off a series of defaults.

Similarly, suspending work on its luxury St Regis condominium in Las Vegas and focusing solely on casino components at its Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, project will save an estimated US$1.8 billion.

Mr Weidner said the current capital market conditions will not have an impact on the Singapore development since the S$5.44 billion credit facility had been secured earlier in the year.

To date, he said, the company has invested US$1.81 billion in construction costs, including land price, in the Marina Bay project, of which an approximate US$616 million was in equity.

The current estimated cost of completing the project is about US$2.7 billion.

Separately yesterday, Macau chief executive Edmund Ho said his government would take over any casino that goes bankrupt there, Bloomberg reported.

Seeking to allay fears as Macau’s crucial gaming sector stutters, he said: ‘Our policy is that we will not allow any casinos to just shut down and cease operations.’

 
Source : Straits Times - 12 Nov 2008

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China’s blessing in disguise

China’s blessing in disguise 

Financial crisis forces govt to tackle economy’s structural imbalances 

By Ching Cheong, Senior Writer 
  

HONG KONG: China surprised the world on Sunday when it announced a whopping 4 trillion yuan (S$878 billion) economic stimulus package, aimed at keeping the country’s growth at 8 per cent for the next two years.
The package, the largest since 1949, amounts to 16 per cent of China’s 24 trillion yuan gross domestic product (GDP) last year.

By way of comparison, the size of the US financial bailout is US$860 billion (S$1.3 trillion), or 5 per cent of its GDP.

It is estimated that half of the funds in the Chinese package will be spent on building more airports, highways and other infrastructure.

This new 2 trillion yuan injection will boost the total infrastructure investment for the current 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010), originally set at 5 trillion yuan, by about 40 per cent.

It is important that the Chinese government keeps its juggernaut of an economy humming and churning out annual growth of at least 8 per cent for the next two years.

Thirty years ago, Chinese leaders found that given the country’s huge population base, the economy must maintain a minimum growth rate of 4 per cent in order to absorb the millions of Chinese who enter the workforce every year.

Since then, this minimum growth rate has risen to 6 per cent, taking into consideration the need to absorb surplus agricultural labour - estimated at 250 million - and to maintain a minimum rise in income expectation among the urban population to maintain social stability.

So while 6 per cent growth is an impressive figure by Western standards, it means only zero growth in China.

The current financial tsunami is already making its effects felt in China and its more than 1.3 billion people.

Growth in the last quarter of 2008 is estimated to slow to 6 per cent, approaching zero growth in Chinese terms, hence the decision to mount the largest-ever economic stimulation plan.

As expected, the package included measures to provide immediate relief for enterprises suffering from the credit crunch, to lift the ceiling on bank lending and to offer tax rebates for performing enterprises.

What distinguishes this package from previous ones is that it seeks to redress the structural imbalances that are already too obvious.

Chinese economists have long identified three sources of imbalances that will render the country’s economic growth unsustainable.

These are inequitable income distribution, which accounts for weak domestic consumption; environmentally unfriendly growth, which creates huge hidden costs; and backward production technology, which consumes more resources to produce the same unit of GDP.

Income disparity is best illustrated by the Gini Coefficient, which shows that the disparity had widened from 0.40 in 1993 to almost 0.5 by 2006.

This is widely taken to be the main reason for the inability to expand domestic consumption.

Environmental cost is best reflected by the Green GDP concept. According to China’s first Green GDP report, economic loss caused by environmental pollution reached 511.8 billion yuan, or 3.05 per cent of GDP in 2004, while imputed treatment cost was 287.4 billion yuan, or 1.80 per cent of GDP.

In other words, the conventional GDP figure should be deflated by 4.85 per cent in order to arrive at the pollution-free income level.

Resource inefficiency can be illustrated by the energy consumption required to produce one unit of GDP.

Currently, China consumes eight times as much energy as Japan to produce one unit of GDP. This leads not only to depletion of resources at home but also competition with other countries to acquire resources abroad.

Such imbalances make China’s growth unsustainable.

To tackle income disparity, the government will provide different subsidies for the needy, raise the prices of agricultural products for farmers, and build low-cost housing for the less well-to-do.

At the same time, more money will be put into setting up a nationwide medical, social and retirement scheme so as to shift the burden from the individual to society.

Concern for these expenses is the main cause preventing the people from spending more on consumption.

These are standard Keynesian measures to create income for the lower classes so that they will have more to spend on consumption.

The second set of measures is aimed at environmental conservation both in the urban and rural areas. These include projects for forestation and to clean the rivers.

The third set of measures tries to foster technological improvement so that China’s products will be less resource-expensive. There are short-term measures to boost innovation and creativity of enterprises as well as more long-term measures to raise the educational and cultural level of the countryside.

Economists have long asked the Chinese government to address these imbalances but to no avail, partly because 30 years of uninterrupted growth have shielded the country from the looming crisis brought about by structural imbalances.

Small wonder that some Chinese commentators believe the current financial crisis may turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

The sheer need to save the mammoth Chinese economy from any untoward consequences of the financial meltdown has finally forced the government to sit up and face these problems squarely.

 
Source : Straits Times - 12 Nov 2008

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DBS overhauls sales tactics

Singapore Punggol EC site fails to draw any bid

Singapore Punggol EC site fails to draw any bid

By UMA SHANKARI

NO bid was received for an executive condominium housing site - despite its being attractively located in Punggol - by the time the tender closed yesterday.
The 99-year leasehold site at the junction of Punggol Field and Punggol Road was launched for sale by the Housing & Development Board (HDB) on Sept 17.

Property analysts had said then that they expect lukewarm response from developers despite its location near Punggol MRT Station and the future Punggol Town Centre.

Nicholas Mak, director of research and consultancy at Knight Frank, predicted fewer than five bids.

When the tender closed at noon yesterday, there wasn’t a single taker.

‘The lack of interest in the site reflects the cautious sentiment in the market,’ said Eugene Lim, assistant vice-president of property firm ERA.

There is also now a problem in deciding how to price executive condominium (EC) flats, he said.

EC flats are thought to be a cut above HDB’s Design, Build and Sell Scheme (DBSS) apartments. With the DBSS scheme, developers have flexibility in designing and pricing the flats - but the homes are still public HDB flats in nature.

 
 
EC flats, on the other hand, are just a step away from private apartments as they come with condo-like facilities and land rights.

With DBSS flats now mostly going for $500,000-$750,000 each and mass market private homes selling for just a bit more than that, it is hard to find a pricing range for EC flats where they will be attractive to homebuyers, Mr Lim said. ‘EC flats target the same market as the DBSS flats - first-time homeowners and HDB upgraders.’

The 242,159 sq ft site is the fourth EC site the government put on the market this year.

Unlike the private residential property market, the HDB market is still going strong.

HDB’s resale price index rose 4.2 per cent in the third quarter. This means that in the first nine months of 2008, HDB resale prices climbed 12.4 per cent. The number of transactions also rose in Q3 to 8,110, from 7,760 in Q2.

Source : Business Times - 12 Nov 2008

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Global crisis could accelerate East Asia’s rise: Singapore SM Goh

Global crisis could accelerate East Asia’s rise: Singapore SM Goh

Western economies can no longer afford to ignore region’s rising contribution
By LEE U-WEN

THE United States will remain first among equals long after the dust from the global financial meltdown settles, but the rise of East Asia could be accelerated by crisis, according to Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong.
 
Mr Goh: Will the West admit successful East Asian economies into its exclusive club as equals? Or will it heighten discomfort which any change may bring? 
He made the point in Hong Kong last night as he argued the case that Western economies can no longer afford to ignore the growing contribution and presence of East Asian nations.

‘The current crisis may well accelerate, and its aftermath will at least confirm, the fundamental changes in the international order that rapid East Asian growth has already set in motion,’ Mr Goh said in a keynote address at the Asia Society Hong Kong Centre’s annual dinner.

Mr Goh, who is on a four-day official visit to Hong Kong and Macau, was invited to speak on the topic, ‘Governance and Growth in Emerging Asia’.

‘We may well be seeing the birth of a multi-polar world,’ he said. ‘Will the developed West admit successful East Asian economies into its exclusive club as equals? Or will it simply heighten discomfort which any change to the status quo may bring?’

He noted that ’symptoms of disquiet’ are already evident, citing examples such as concern over Asian sovereign wealth funds injecting capital into foreign assets, controversies over the interpretation and implementation of human rights and debates over the reform of the United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

‘The list could easily be extended,’ said Mr Goh. ‘The proximate causes may differ, but there is a common source of discomfort. In East Asia, capitalism flourishes without Western style liberal democracy. This challenges the preferred historical narrative of the West in a fundamental way.’

Mr Goh admitted that restructuring of international order ‘is never easy’ and that historically, all such changes have been either the cause or result of conflicts.

To avoid history repeating itself, countries should ‘not propagate simplistic ideas’ about the superiority of one system or another, he said. Instead, all nations should realise that no one type of political system has a monopoly on success, and that growth can take place under different types of systems.

Mr Goh listed four main attributes a political system should have for a country to flourish: accountability and transparency; long- term planning and execution; social justice and harmony; a culture of identifying and grooming talent for public service.

‘Every country must find the political system that can deliver the goods,’ he said. ‘And what works in one historical period may not necessarily deliver in another. But however societies evolve politically, we must never lose sight of these basic attributes if they are to continue to prosper.’

Source : Business Times - 12 Nov 2008

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Redas offers more insights after bleak reports

Redas offers more insights after bleak reports

It calls meeting to advise analysts that URA data may not give full picture
By UMA SHANKARI
(SINGAPORE) The recent string of negative reports on the property market has prompted the Real Estate Developers’ Association of Singapore (Redas) to engage analysts and offer them alternative sources of market data.
This came as analysts have drawn very bearish conclusions in recent weeks, based on official supply numbers from the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA).

These included a string of research notes from firms such as Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs which have projected significant falls in mass-market, mid-tier and high-end private home prices.

Redas’ position is that URA’s numbers are general in nature. On certain specific issues, they feel it is better to check with property consultants who can provide more detailed data.

Sources say the industry body met property analysts from local and foreign research firms last Friday. The meeting was chaired by Redas president Simon Cheong, who is also chief executive of upscale residential developer SC Global Developments.

Analysts from several foreign banks - including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Nomura and UBS - attended the meeting, together with those from key local research firms such as DBS Vickers and CIMB-GK.

 
 
Also present were members of Redas’ management committee including representatives from CapitaLand, City Developments, Keppel Land and Far East Organization.

Sources say consultants from all the major property firms in Singapore - CB Richard Ellis, Colliers, DTZ, Jones Lang LaSalle, Knight Frank and Savills - as well as a legal advisor close to Redas also lent their weight.

Redas held the meeting to give equity analysts a more in-depth understanding of property issues in the light of the difficult economic environment, BT understands.

The perception is that while there are seasoned analysts who know the market well, there are others who are either new to the area of property research and lack historical perspective, or too young to fully understand the workings of the market.

The major property consultancies were there to offer help to analysts, and the legal advisor was present to explain technical issues including those involving the rights of buyers and sellers in property transactions.

Sources say one analyst present at the meeting suggested that the large developers could release their own data regularly to further improve clarity.

This is the first time Redas had organised such a briefing but based on the response, more such dialogues may be organised in the future. Views were freely exchanged, sources who were present told BT. Analysts also said they would take Redas’ points into consideration.

 
Source : Business Times - 12 Nov 2008

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