Naturalis @ 2 Telok Kurau Lorong M for sale

Naturalis @ 2 Telok Kurau Lorong M for sale

District: 15 ( Amber Rd, Joo Chiat, Katong, Marine Parade, Meyer, Tanjong Rhu )
Property Type: Condominium
Asking Price: $ 523,000
No. of bedrooms: 1
No. of bathrooms: 1
Built up: 517 sq. ft.

Singapore Property - Buy, Sell, Rent, Invest

Mindy Yong

(+65)91002985

mindy@mindyyong.com

The Makena @ Meyer Road For Sale

The Makena @ Meyer Road For Sale

District: 15 ( Amber Rd, Joo Chiat, Katong, Marine Parade, Meyer, Tanjong Rhu )
Property Type: Condominium
Asking Price: $ 1,680,000
No of storeys: 10
Tenure: Freehold
No. of bedrooms: 3
No. of bathrooms: 2
Utility: 1
Built up: 1292 sq. ft.

Singapore Property - Buy, Sell, Rent, Invest

Mindy Yong

(+65)91002985

mindy@mindyyong.com

They planned to kill 5,000 people Mumbai fears some militants escaped

They planned to kill 5,000 people Mumbai fears some militants escaped

Mumbai fears some militants escaped

MUMBAI: The coordinated terrorist attack could have been much worse, an Indian official said, with investigations showing the attackers planned to kill 5,000 people.
The Indian authorities were also investigating whether some of the attackers may have escaped, blending into Mumbai’s 18 million residents, CNN reported on its website yesterday.

‘We found bullets with them, hand grenades, bombs,’ Mr R. R. Patil, deputy chief minister of Maharashtra state, said at a news conference. ‘Based on our investigation, we believe they had planned to kill 5,000 people.’ He did not give details.

Around a dozen gunmen had attacked multiple targets across Mumbai last Wednesday evening, before focusing on two hotels, where they attempted to pick out US and British nationals. Some 60 hours later, Indian commando units overcame the last remaining attackers, by which time nearly 200 people had been killed in the assault on the city.

A top Indian commando official also said yesterday that the militants had never intended to keep any hostages alive.

‘At no stage did we get any demand from the side of the terrorists,’ the head of the elite National Security Guard (NSG), Mr J.K. Dutt, told reporters.

All the ’senseless killings’ in the Taj and Oberoi Trident hotels had been carried out before commando units stormed the buildings, he added.

He said the holdout terrorists had a comprehensive knowledge of the Taj’s layout as they were able to move from one place to another ‘without a mis-step’. And whenever the special forces units launched an offensive, the gunmen would set fire to a hotel room to create a diversion, before moving on to a new hiding place.

‘For these reasons it was very difficult to dislodge them,’ he said.

It was also revealed that the Taj hotel temporarily increased security after being warned of a possible terrorist attack, the chairman of the company that owns the hotel said.

But Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata said those measures, which were eased shortly before last week’s terror attacks, could not have prevented gunmen from entering the hotel.

‘People couldn’t park their cars in the portico, where you had to go through a metal detector,’ Mr Tata said in a CNN interview aired yesterday, noting that the attackers did not come in through that entrance but via the back.

‘They knew what they were doing, and they did not go through the front. All of our arrangements are in the front.’

In Malaysia, officials said they are checking whether the terrorists carried Malaysian-issued credit cards as reported by Indian media on Saturday. And Malaysia denied that the attackers had links to the country, following a report in the Times of India newspaper that prior to the carnage, some of them had rented rooms in Mumbai by claiming to be Malaysian students.

‘We will definitely look into the addresses to see if the gunmen have a Malaysian link,’ police chief Musa Hassan was quoted by the online version of the Star newspaper as saying.

Indian police have yet to provide details on the gunmen’s identity and the addresses, he said.

Tan Sri Musa said Malaysian police were also liaising with their Indian counterparts and with Interpol to verify Malaysian credit cards found at the scene of the attacks.

Malaysian Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar said Malaysia had no links with the attackers, and that India had yet to make contact over the matter.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS

Source : Straits Times - 01 Dec 2008

Singapore Property - Buy, Sell, Rent, Invest

Mindy Yong

(+65)91002985

mindy@mindyyong.com

Bangkok hotel becomes base for stranded Singaporeans - Thailand

Bangkok hotel becomes base for stranded Singaporeans - Thailand

Siam City Hotel is now a holding area for Republic’s citizens

By Serene Luo

IT HAS been five days and counting for Mr Leong Sow Hoe and his group of 49 other Singaporeans stranded in Bangkok.
The group from Bethesda Cathedral, heading home from Israel via Bangkok, were supposed to be in transit in the Thai airport.

But when thousands of Thai protesters descended on Suvarnabhumi Airport last Wednesday, the Singaporeans’ plane could not land there; it was instead diverted to U-Tapao, an old military airstrip 140km from Bangkok.

From there, the group was shuttled by bus to Bangkok, where they have since been holed up in Siam City Hotel.

Mr Leong, the group’s leader, told The Straits Times the hotel has become ‘Singapore Central’.

‘There are quite a number of other Singaporeans here besides us, I have no idea how many exactly, but the hotel is packed,’ said the 48-year-old Prudential agency manager.

The hotel, with over 400 rooms, has been designated as a holding place for Singaporeans by the authorities, he said.

It is a five-minute drive from Bangkok’s shopping strip, where life goes on as usual.

The group desperately wants to come home, as many of its elderly members are running out of medicine for chronic illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressure and lupus.

Yesterday, some of them went from pharmacy to pharmacy looking for their prescription medications.

They have other problems: The hotlines for Singapore’s embassy in Bangkok and travel agencies are engaged all the time; flights and trains continue to be booked solid till the end of the week.

The group’s older members are unlikely to be able to endure an almost two-day-long bus trip back to Singapore, Mr Leong said.

But the Singaporeans in the hotel can count themselves lucky, having arrived early enough to be put on buses to Bangkok.

Tourists who are arriving at U-Tapao now have reportedly been camping outside the airstrip and using portable toilets. They have neither been able to get transport into an increasingly crowded Bangkok nor get on a plane out of Thailand.

U-Tapao, not designed to handle more than a few flights daily, is processing about 50 flights or an estimated 15,000 passengers daily now. In contrast, Suvarnabhumi airport can handle 60,000 to 70,000 people daily, officials estimated.

Some countries such as China and Spain are chartering flights to fly their citizens home, and some marooned Singaporeans are hoping the Government here will do the same.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is helping about 100 Singaporeans get confirmed tickets home, said it was working with Singapore carriers to mount extra flights. Singapore Airlines, SilkAir and Air Asia have been adding extra flights.

Businessman A. Seet, 56, who returned home on Saturday morning after a 25-hour journey by bus and air, advised other stranded Singaporeans to ‘hit the road’.

He left Bangkok by mini-bus with seven friends and family members on Friday morning and headed for Kuala Lumpur, from where he caught a flight home.

Source : Straits Times - 01 Dec 2008

Singapore Property - Buy, Sell, Rent, Invest

Mindy Yong

(+65)91002985

mindy@mindyyong.com

Delhi’s top brass quit in terror attack fallout

Delhi’s top brass quit in terror attack fallout

Ties with nuclear rival worsen as India claims Pakistani link to attacks

By Ravi Velloor, South Asia Bureau Chief

More than 250 people turned up at the wake for lawyer Lo Hwei Yen, who was killed in the Mumbai terrorist attacks. — DESMOND WEE

MUMBAI: Two of India’s top officials quit yesterday over the Mumbai attack as the fallout from the three-day terror rampage threatened to push India’s ties with nuclear rival Pakistan to near-crisis level.
Home Minister Shivraj Patil resigned to take ‘moral responsibility’ for not being able to stop last week’s attacks that killed more than 170 people. Hours later, National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan also submitted his resignation.

Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram was appointed to take over Mr Patil’s job and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will take over the finance portfolio for now, the government said.

An aide to the Prime Minister said ‘more senior members of the government are likely to be shown the door’ in the wake of the attacks, news agency Agence France-Presse reported.

Yesterday’s resignations came a day after heavy polling in New Delhi state elections indicated that popular two-time Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit of the ruling Congress party may be unseated amid a wave of public anger against the government’s record on terrorism and rising tension with neighbouring Pakistan.

India is considering suspending a peace process with Pakistan following the Mumbai attacks blamed on Pakistan-based militants, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported yesterday.

The official news agency quoted unnamed officials as saying that the government, ‘including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is very upset as it feels that Pakistan has not kept its promise made at the highest level to end terrorism directed at India’.

Sources told PTI ‘a series of high-level meetings at political and official levels will be taking place in the coming few days to decide what to do’.

India said yesterday it was raising security to a ‘war level’ and had proof of a Pakistani link to the attacks. Indian officials have said most, if not all, of the 10 militants who held Mumbai hostage with frenzied attacks using assault rifles and grenades came from Pakistan.

The tension has raised the prospect of a breakdown of peace efforts going on since 2004. The two nations have fought three wars since 1947, when Muslim Pakistan was carved out of Hindu-majority India. They went to the brink of a fourth conflict after a 2001 militant attack on the Indian Parliament which New Delhi also blamed on Pakistan.

‘We will increase security and strengthen it at a war level like we have never done it before,’ said India’s Minister of State for Home Affairs Sriprakash Jaiswal yesterday. Over the weekend, Pakistan’s security apparatus warned that the next few days would be crucial for the nuclear-armed neighbours’ relations.

Pakistan, which has condemned the assaults and denied any involvement by state agencies, said it would wind up its ‘war on terror’ on the Afghanistan border if the situation on the India border worsened.

‘The Indians are taking the escalation level up at a very brisk pace,’ a top security official said, adding the 90,000 troops on the Pakistani-Afghan border may be withdrawn.

Although the current situation is nowhere near as dire in 2001, there is mounting alarm. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called her Indian counterpart twice over the past three days and also Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari.

The Mumbai death toll was revised down yesterday to 172 from 195 after the authorities said some bodies were counted twice, but they said it could rise again as more bodies were found.

Source : Straits Times - 01 Dec 2008

Singapore Property - Buy, Sell, Rent, Invest

Mindy Yong

(+65)91002985

mindy@mindyyong.com

Further hedge-fund withdrawals likely: Morgan Stanley

Further hedge-fund withdrawals likely: Morgan Stanley

(NEW YORK) Morgan Stanley increased its estimate for hedge-fund withdrawals as investors raise cash following declines in financial markets worldwide this year.

Mr van Steenis: Asian hedge funds expected to lose 25 to 30 per cent from redemptions
The industry may shrink as much as 45 per cent by the end of the year to US$1.1 trillion from its June peak of US$1.9 trillion, the New York-based bank said in a report on Friday. In October, the bank estimated hedge-fund assets would decline 32 per cent to US$1.3 trillion.

‘Poor performance could lead to material further shrinkage in 2009,’ Huw van Steenis, a Morgan Stanley analyst in London, wrote.

The hedge-fund industry is experiencing its worst year in almost two decades because of stock-market declines and a credit freeze that started with rising defaults on US sub-prime mortgages. Hedge funds including Satellite Asset Management LP in New York and Millennium Global Investments Ltd in London have suspended investor withdrawals in the past month after being inundated with requests from clients.

Hedge funds have posted investment losses averaging 22 per cent this year through Nov 24, according to Hedge Fund Research Inc’s HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index.

European hedge-fund managers may lose as much as 30 per cent of their assets by the end of the year, a revision of October’s estimate of 25 per cent, according to Mr van Steenis.

European hedge funds will be affected the most by withdrawals because their investors can ask to have money returned on shorter notice than in the US, he said.

US hedge funds may shed as much as 20 per cent of their values, Mr van Steenis said, up from his earlier estimate of a 15 per cent decline. ‘US institutional redemptions could also pick up in the first quarter of 2009,’ he said.

Asian hedge funds will lose 25 per cent to 30 per cent from redemptions, his report said.

An increasing number of investor redemptions are coming from institutional investors such as pension funds and university endowments that have ‘over-committed to private equity and need to raise cash’, Mr van Steenis said.

Hedge funds are private, largely unregulated pools of money whose managers can buy or sell any assets and participate substantially in profits from investments. — Bloomberg

Source : Business Times - 01 Dec 2008

Singapore Property - Buy, Sell, Rent, Invest

Mindy Yong

(+65)91002985

mindy@mindyyong.com

Hedge fund shake-up positive for industry

Hedge fund shake-up positive for industry

More investment opportunities open for other funds, says BNP Paribas exec

By EMILYN YAP

THE financial storm may have hit hedge fund returns but it is also shaking up the industry in a good way, said chairman of the BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre Network, Patrick Fauchier.

‘Although in absolute terms the hedge fund industry hasn’t been doing its job so far, in relative terms I’m better off in a fund of hedge funds than in a traditional portfolio.’

- Patrick Fauchier

He reckoned that as weaker funds and competitors are swept away, there will be more investment opportunities for remaining hedge funds to pursue.

Mr Fauchier, who is also chairman of fund of hedge funds manager Fauchier Partners, was speaking at the Singapore Management University on Friday last week. He admitted that hedge funds have not done well in the year to date, but pointed out that the industry still outperforms the broader equity market.

According to data provider Eurekahedge, the MSCI World Index shed 19.1 per cent in October while the Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index (based on funds which had reported their results as of mid-November) dropped 3.9 per cent in the same period.

‘Although in absolute terms the hedge fund industry hasn’t been doing its job so far, in relative terms I’m better off in a fund of hedge funds than in a traditional portfolio,’ said Mr Fauchier.

And he is confident that hedge funds will do better when markets regain more stability. For one, there will be less external competition as the crisis forces investment banks to fold their proprietary trading desks. JP Morgan Chase was one which did so last month, said Reuters.

Within the hedge fund industry, stronger players will remain. The financial crisis ‘is going to get rid of the people who are not professionally excellent’ and some funds will close, said Mr Fauchier.

In the meantime, traders leaving proprietary desks could set up their own hedge funds and raise the industry standard further. ‘These managers, (most of whom) are very talented, are going to need to work,’ he quipped.

And with fear leading to indiscriminate selling in the markets, there will be many pricing anomalies for hedge funds to capitalise on, he added

With these factors working in the industry’s favour, the outlook could brighten next year. ‘Probably, we will see the worst at the end of this year,’ he told BT.

While hedge funds have been facing more redemptions, the outflow was mostly money from private banks, said Mr Fauchier. ‘Professional money’ from investors such as pension funds and endowment funds are still going to the industry, he maintained.

Source : Business Times - 01 Dec 2008

Singapore Property - Buy, Sell, Rent, Invest

Mindy Yong

(+65)91002985

mindy@mindyyong.com

Varsity endowment funds weather market storm

Varsity endowment funds weather market storm

NUS, NTU, SMU shielded somewhat since not all funds committed; academic programmes won’t suffer

By SIOW LI SEN

(SINGAPORE) Singapore’s university endowment funds - not surprisingly - are struggling to cope with the financial meltdown.

Still, the damage is not too bad because endowment investing here is a relatively recent development - not all funds have been committed, which has provided some protection from the financial turmoil.

The National University of Singapore (NUS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Singapore Management University (SMU) have also said there will be little impact on their academic programmes and that no student will suffer due to financial constraints.

This is unlike in the United States, where Harvard University warned recently of spending cuts because the economic slowdown could reduce government funding and eat into the school’s substantial endowment.

Harvard’s endowment fund - the biggest among US universities, and which meets about a third of operating costs - posted an 8.6 per cent return and grew to US$36.9 billion in the fiscal year ended June 30. But the university lost 12.7 per cent on its US stock portfolio and 12.1 per cent on its foreign equity portfolio during that time. The previous year’s return was 23 per cent.

This is unlike in the US, where Harvard University warned recently of spending cuts because the economic slowdown could reduce government funding and eat into the school’s substantial endowment.

Among the local universities, only SMU has given a glimpse of how recent months have been shaping up for endowment funds here. Its $436 million endowment fund took a $12.4 million hit, resulting in a net loss of $1.4 million for the year ended March 31, 2008.

The $12.4 million loss is mainly a mark-to-market or paper loss, said chief investment officer Teo Jwee Liang. SMU’s general fund also took a mark-to-market loss of $10.8 million, with a net loss of $2.9 million.

Mr Teo said the net loss of $1.4 million against the endowment fund of $436 million equates to only 0.3 per cent of assets.

He added that the first six months of FY 2008-09 have been a challenging period for most investors.

‘It is inevitable for portfolios to be negatively impacted by the market meltdown,’ Mr Teo said. But given the well-diversified portfolio, he was confident of riding the current environment and being positioned for recovery later.

NUS’s endowment investing also takes a very long-term perspective. ‘Periods of negative return over the course of economic cycles have to be expected,’ a spokesman said.

The NUS endowment fund of $1.3 billion is the biggest among the three universities here. It has engaged external investment managers and also puts money into hedge funds and private equity funds. ‘We are currently overweight in cash and fixed-income relative to our long-term targets,’ a spokesman said.

Core education, research and student financial assistance will not be significantly affected by lower returns from investments due to the financial downturn, the spokesman said.

NTU’s endowment fund was slightly more than $900 million in March this year.

In line with NTU’s long- term policy to invest in diversified and uncorrelated asset classes, there was some reallocation of funds from fixed-income to other asset classes in FY 2006, a spokeswoman said.

For the year ended March 31, 2007, NTU’s profit on investment for its endowment fund dropped sharply to $46.2 million, from $92.7 million.

‘The lower profit on investments in FY 2006 (ended March 2007) compared with the previous year reflected lower returns on financial assets,’ the NTU spokeswoman said. As a reference, the return on global equities in Sing dollar terms, based on the MSCI World Index, was 8.8 per cent for the year ended March 2007 compared with 16.1 per cent the year before.

Target Asset Management chief executive Teng Ngiek Lian said times have been tough for fund managers. ‘The multi-failures caught many by surprise, with so many asset classes caving in at the same time,’ said Mr Teng, who manages money for many universities.

Source : Business Times - 01 Dec 2008

Singapore Property - Buy, Sell, Rent, Invest

Mindy Yong

(+65)91002985

mindy@mindyyong.com