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~~~~ CORPORATE GOVERNANCE ~~~~
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pharoah88
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03-Oct-2010 16:05
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pharoah88
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03-Oct-2010 15:21
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BMW recalls 200,000 luxury vehicles BMW's recall of nearly 200,000 luxury vehicles in the U.S. to fix leaks that could develop in the power braking system may extend to another 150,000 cars around the globe. |
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pharoah88
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02-Oct-2010 14:52
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Sat: 2 OCT 2010 TODAY ONLINE Auditor-General ‘needs boost’ Letter from James Ang THE corruption case at the Singapore Land Authority brings to mind the last two reports by the Auditor-General. In these, it expressed concern about certain procurement and financial processes in the various ministries and agencies. While I am glad that $10 million in cash and assets have been recovered in the present case, it is hoped that every ministry and agency learns from this episode and starts implementing specific control measures. In addition, the Auditor-General’s Office could be provided with more resources as the Government has grown in size over the last decade.
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pharoah88
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02-Oct-2010 12:20
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‘Wall Street’ redux: Greed’s Next crisis Titans of finance with the ethical code of gangsters.
Joe Nocera -
Twenty-three years ago, Oliver Stone made the most memorable business movie of all: “Wall Street,” which captured an era and an ethos. Now the left-leaning, blunt-talking director was trying to explain why his new movie, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” was not the fictionalized version of the financial crisis of 2008 I had expected.
“I don’t know how you show a credit default swap on the screen,” Mr. Stone said. It just couldn’t be done, he said.
The crisis, he insisted, was merely meant to be the backdrop for a story about a handful of “complex” people — an older, wiser Gordon Gekko among them — who just happened to be operating on Wall Street around September 2008.
“People won’t watch a business movie,” Mr. Stone said. The more he protested, the more he sounded like a man who hadn’t pulled off what he had set out to accomplish and was now making excuses.
The original “Wall Street” created indelible images: Gordon Gekko, played with delirious vigor by Michael Douglas, barking out buy and sell orders that make or break companies and competitors.
His acolyte, Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), who gains Gekko’s favor by feeding him inside information.
The famous “greed is good” speech Gekko delivers to the hapless directors of a company that has become his latest prey.
The original “Wall Street,” Mr. Stone told me, “was about a kid who sells out his father.” True enough. But the events that characterized Wall Street in the 1980s were a lot more than a backdrop.
They were crucial to the plot. The movie was built around insider trading and the predations of the hostile takeover movement.
Ivan Boesky, who went to jail for insider trading, made the original “greed is good” speech. Michael Milken, the inspiration, in part, for Gekko, was known as the “junk bond king” and financed the hostile takeover movement.
In “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” many of the characters — and firms — are stand-ins for real people and real companies. Frank Langella’s character is based on Jimmy Cayne, the former chief executive of Bear Stearns. Josh Brolin, who plays the villain, heads Churchill Schwartz, which is modeled on Goldman Sachs, ruthlessly taking advantage of competitors.
And though Mr. Douglas returns as Gordon Gekko, he spends much of the film predicting the coming cataclysm.
The problem is that, with rare exception, the characters merely talk about the things that helped bring the world’s financial system to the brink. Gekko’s sermons have the quality of a Greek chorus, describing crucial events that we never see.
Instead, the plot revolves around the efforts of a young investment banker, Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf), to get financing for an earnest clean-energy company.
Even the one big exception is instructive.
With Mr. Langella’s firm on the brink of failure, the New York Federal Reserve calls together all the Wall Street barons in the hope of finding a way to save the firm. (Mr. Brolin’s company winds up buying it cheaply, not unlike the way J.P. Morgan bought Bear Stearns for practically nothing.)
But Mr. Stone told me he worried that devoting so much screen time to those meetings — seven minutes in all — could cost him some of his audience. So he embellished them so much that they resemble a gathering of mobsters in “The Godfather.”
The events that took place on Wall Street from the summer of 2007 to the fall of 2008, when even mighty Goldman Sachs’s survival was in doubt, were inherently dramatic.
Much of the trading that went on in the prelude to the crisis utterly lacked any redeeming virtue.
Villains abounded. Was it really so impossible to build a movie script out of this material?
Olaf Rogge, a big-time London money manager who was an adviser to the film, said he was disappointed.
“He missed a beautiful opportunity,” Mr. Rogge said of the director. “He could have pointed out how we were five minutes from the brink of anarchy.”
There is something a little unfair in criticizing a director for not making the film you had hoped he would make. But Mr. Stone looked the crisis straight in the eye — and blinked. essay |
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pharoah88
Supreme |
01-Oct-2010 09:30
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pharoah88
Supreme |
30-Sep-2010 11:17
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ICAP sues 38 brokers to stop defection SINGAPORE ICAP handles US$1 trillion ($1.31 trillion) in daily trades and “in one fell swoop” risked losing long-standing relationships with customers including Goldman Sachs Group, Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan Chase, said Mr Kim Rosenkilde, chief executive officer of London-based ICAP’s Asian operations, in papers filed with the Singapore High Court this month. The group had access to confidential data including clients’ list, trading strategies and brokers’ pay, ICAP said. The information, if wrongfully disclosed, would give its competitors “a unique opportunity to mount a wholesale raid on” ICAP’s workforce, according to the papers. Mr Rosenkilde emailed Mr Steve Miles, managing director of Tradition’s Singapore operations on Sept 12, informing the Swiss broker that the group would be breaching their employment contracts and ICAP would protect its legal rights, according to the papers. ICAP has about 300 employees in Singapore. The court ordered Lausanne, Switzerland-based Tradition on Sept 22 to stop recruiting ICAP’s brokers until the dispute is resolved, ICAP spokesman Mike Sheard said in an email statement. “Although the situation is somewhat uncertain, its potential impact is not currently regarded as likely to be material for the purposes of ICAP’s results,” he said. Tradition declined to comment, as did the brokers’ lawyers. Tradition and the group have not filed their statements of defence. The group breached their employment agreements because they failed to disclose that they had been approached by Tradition, did not serve the full term of their contracts and submitted resignations before a deadline would have allowed, ICAP said. “Brokers operate as a tightly knitted team,” ICAP said. The men are “therefore in a position to exert considerable influence over the brokers remaining”. A Tradition employee said in a Sept 9 instant message to one of ICAP’s brokers that the Swiss interdealer broker “will be an old ICAP bookies alumni”, according to the court papers. — ICAP Plc, the world’s biggest broker of trades between banks, has sued 38 of its dealers in Singapore and Swiss rival Compagnie Financiere Tradition SA in a bid to block them from defecting.Bloomberg |
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pharoah88
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29-Sep-2010 09:17
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sUper salary leads tO materIalIsm ? Materialism leads tO Acute Severe Money SyndrOme [ACMS] ? ACMS leads tO GREED ? GREED leads tO UNethical Inclination ? UNethical Inclination leads tO mOral cOrrUptIOn ? mOral cOrrUptIOn leads tO FRAUD ? |
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pharoah88
Supreme |
29-Sep-2010 09:07
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payIng tOO well makes peOple materIstIc ? heartless ? UNethIcal ? mOney face ? |
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pharoah88
Supreme |
29-Sep-2010 09:01
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Former deputy director charged; manager helping with investigation |
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pharoah88
Supreme |
29-Sep-2010 08:59
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#### Multi-million dollar fraud at SLA #### | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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pharoah88
Supreme |
22-Sep-2010 12:23
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####InsanIty####________<><><><>dOIng SAME thIngs Over & Over agaIn<><><><>________[][][][]eXpectIng dIfferent resUlts!!!![][][][]________[!][!][!][!] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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pharoah88
Supreme |
15-Sep-2010 14:58
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<><><><>Give up citizenship? Do it for $219 at travel agency<><><><> {}{}{}Letter from G Saraswathi{}{}{} I DECIDED to become a Singapore citizen five months ago and my application was approved. The application form stated that I had to go to the Indian High Commission to renounce my citizenship. I did not, however, expect to be told at the High Commission to go to a travel agency to make the renunciation because the High Commission was no longer processing renunciations of citizenship over the counter. I was told I would have to pay $219 to make the renunciation. I was confused as to why I had to, in the first place, go to a travel agency to renounce my citizenship and, secondly, pay $219 to do so. [][][][]No charges were levied in the past.[][][][] I was told that the High Commission had made the decision three weeks earlier. It had at that time stopped granting visas and renunciations over the counter and had given the work to selected travel agents. I would like to clarify why no announcement was made and why those who want to renounce their citizenship now have to pay $219. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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pharoah88
Supreme |
15-Sep-2010 09:53
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<><><>Sias to host corporate governance week<><><> SINGAPORE — More organisations in the region are recognising the need for better corporate governance — something that can be achieved by increasing the level of communication between companies’ boards and investors, according to the Securities Investors Association Singapore (Sias). <><><><><><><><>“Investors want to know how companies are ensuring independence on the board. If they are truly run by independent directors, it will be good for investors,” said Sias president and chief executive David Gerald yesterday. <><><><><><><><>His comment came as Sias announced its first week-long corporate governance event slated for Oct 4 to 8. <><><><><><><><>Highlights include the Asian Investors’ Corporate Governance Conference, the Investors Choice Awards, executive workshops and a seminar for Catalist-listed firms. It is targeting 400 participants, two thirds of which are expected to come from South-east Asia. The event also calls on companies to publish a statement of support for corporate governance in the media. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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pharoah88
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14-Sep-2010 20:31
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}{}{}{}{WHY does this THREAD reSTRICT CREATIVITY}{}{}{}{ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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pharoah88
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14-Sep-2010 20:29
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<><><><>Make clear role of alternate directors<><><><> But there is no one-size-fits-all rule <>Jo-ann Huang<> [][]joannhuang@mediacorp.com.sg[][] SINGAPORE — The role of alternate directors should be made transparent to the board and shareholders, the Singapore Institute of Directors (SID) and the Securities Investors Association of Singapore (Sias) said yesterday. However, regulating the appointment of alternate directors would be difficult as this is assessed on a companyto- company basis, the associations told MediaCorp. They made their comments after a heated exchange in The Business Times (BT) between Xpress Holdings independent director Christopher Chong and Associate Professor Mak Yuen Teen, the co-director of corporate governance and reporting at the NUS Business School. In his newspaper column, Prof Mak cited SGX-listed Xpress Holdings as an example of a company that appointed alternate directors to its independent directors. “Appointing an alternate to help a busy independent director cope with his responsibilities is unacceptable; it reflects poorly on the corporate governance of the company concerned,” he wrote in the BT. Mr Chong explained that his appointment of former head of issuer regulation at SGX, Ms Linda Ong, was to assist with a proposed secondary listing of Xpress Holdings in Taiwan. An alternate director is appointed by a company’s nominating committee to represent an independent director at board meetings. Mr Gerald said that the duties of alternate directors should be made clear. “If the board needs the independent director’s involvement based on his experience and qualification, the alternate director must have similar experience and training to represent the ID’s view on company matters,” said Sias president David Gerald. He suggested that independent directors should assess their ability to fulfil their directorships before coming on board. He added that Sias had not received any complaints regarding alternate directors. SID executive director Giang Sovann said regulating the appointment of alternate directors would be difficult. According to the Singapore Companies Act, there are no regulations pertaining to the duties of an alternate director. “There are many different many circumstances as to how companies nominate alternate directors,” said Mr Sovann. “They could have the required expertise or special abilities. It’s quite difficult to have a one-size-fits-all rule as to what circumstances allow for an alternate director or not,” he explained. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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pharoah88
Supreme |
13-Sep-2010 13:47
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#### Did authorities not
know about shuttles? ####
Was there an
inter-agency
breakdown?
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pharoah88
Supreme |
12-Sep-2010 16:57
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Singapore Home > Breaking News > Singapore > Story Sep 12, 2010 Fire at Bukit Timah condo By Amanda Tan A third-storey apartment in the 517-unit Parc Palais was completely covered in soot after fire ravaged the kitchen and damaged cabinets and appliances. -- ST PHOTO: BENJAMIN NG A FIRE that broke out in the kitchen of a Bukit Timah condominium on Saturday afternoon did not cause any injuries, but it raised concerns among residents about fire safety measures there. A third-storey apartment in the 517-unit Parc Palais was completely covered in soot after fire ravaged the kitchen and damaged cabinets and appliances. A couple and their two children, aged seven and 10, live there. Neighbours said that the place is rented. It was a close shave for the family, the wife said, since her children would normally be at home at that time on a Saturday. The woman, whom neighbours know as Mrs Wang, told The Sunday Times that her son, the elder child, was supposed to be having tuition but the teacher had called in sick. Read the full story in The Sunday Times | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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pharoah88
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12-Sep-2010 16:28
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ST Forum Home > ST Forum > Story Sep 11, 2010 Gap unbridgeable without external help MS SYLVIA Wong ('Mind the textbook Gap'; Sept9) hit the nail on the head - the gap between the textbooks and the exam papers is unbridgeable by an average child without external help. The textbooks leave much to be desired. Assessment books available in the market are of some help. But most parents are lost when it comes to explaining concepts to the child unless they themselves are proficient in that subject. And how many of us have a grasp of all subjects to help our children? Content matter and methodology have changed over time. We may have studied the same subjects in school but things are different now. That is why parents are forced to seek out private tutors. The situation is aggravated by the extremely competitive times our children live in, where no parent wants his child to be left behind as the demanding curriculum of the Singapore education system gives second chances only to a select few. Sonia Mehrotra (Mrs) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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pharoah88
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12-Sep-2010 15:17
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ST Forum Home > ST Forum > Story Sep 11, 2010 Give weak pupils a fighting chance I FULLY agree with Ms Sylvia Wong ('Mind the textbook gap'; Sept 9). I taught academically weak primary school children for 40 years. It was heart-wrenching to see those children failing dismally at every continual assessment, semestral assessment and the Primary School Leaving Examination. Those at the tail end of the streamed cohort, in particular those in EM2, floundered hopelessly because the examination questions were mostly well beyond their ability. Parents who came for the parent-teacher meetings would invariably ask me why their children's daily work was up to par, and yet they failed abysmally at the exams. Initially, I tried hard to get the children accustomed to the challenging genre of questions, but it was an exercise in futility - the gap was yawning. In the end, I accepted reality and grounded them in the basics - hoping they would score enough to be transferred to Secondary 1 Normal Technical stream. I use the word 'transferred' because the candidates who went to Secondary 1 had mostly Ds and Es (failing grades), in addition to a couple of weak Cs or Bs, and occasionally an A. I argued for far more balanced examination papers so that the weak pupils had a fighting chance to at least secure a passing grade. My pleas fell on deaf ears as each succeeding year saw the emergence of even more challenging exam papers, which totally dashed whatever hopes the weak candidates had to secure at least a passing grade. Not only were the questions very difficult but some were also couched in complex sentences requiring a good grasp of the language, and at the same time, guessing correctly what the setter wanted them to do. The smart and above-average children got by with the extra help they got at home or at tuition centres. The parents of average and weak ones would surely be relieved and encouraged if those who set examination papers do so with some thought for the stragglers and strugglers. Ms Wong's arguments for a closer affinity between textbooks and examinations deserve the staunch support of all - parents, teachers and administrators alike. Ho Kong Loon Text size Discuss thisEmail thisPrint this Latest comments Hate to admit but china nationals children are excelling in schools and soon, they will be managers and local citizens sons and daughters will be their employees... Posted by: diamondsutra2010 at Sat Sep 11 12:34:31 SGT 2010 No matter how you play with exam standards, the root problem is that even at P3, P4, children come with a wide range of abilities because of talent, home environment, tuition etc. Some of the slower kids may be academic late bloomers, but some are also non-bloomers. The education system should accommodate some non-academic paths suitable to the latter. Posted by: Baikinman at Sat Sep 11 12:31:16 SGT 2010 What has streaming in primary school done to my kids. I have a child in the express and has gone on to Poly. I have a younger child who is slower and end up in EM3. Went to sec NT. His grade in NT are all in A's. For the past 3years, he was encouraged to join the main stream by the parents, teachers and even the principal, but my kid refused because he lacked the confidence. Posted by: neutralnetz at Sat Sep 11 07:32:16 SGT 2010 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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pharoah88
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12-Sep-2010 14:19
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Sep 11, 2010Understanding the PR psycheI REFER to Thursday's report ('PRs won't be forced to become citizens'). Foreigners turn to living abroad for a broad range of reasons. Some will even country-hop as they want to have a taste of living in different environments before settling down in one place. Permanent Residents (PRs) with special skills will be in demand everywhere and they will leave if the host country makes it difficult for them to settle in. Already, we have quite a few incentives in the health-care, education and housing areas for PRs who want to become citizens. Nevertheless, many of them may not take up Singapore citizenship merely for tangible reasons, however substantial they may seem. They may do it only when they are able to call the host country home and feel welcomed. The confidence that the family can survive comfortably in the host country and contribute to its society is also an important element of consideration for foreigners. There is no point for a PR to become a citizen if he feels that he will have to struggle to make a living later in his life. On another note, I feel that the Government should make its criteria for selection of PRs more stringent so that only real talent that would benefit the country as a whole are allowed in. Singaporeans are fairly open to the idea of importing talent to boost our economy and partially solve our declining birth rate. However, those brought in should not be competing for jobs with average Singaporeans. Bringing in too many foreigners too soon will also not help the situation one bit as the population needs time and space to adapt. Gilbert Goh Sydney Text size Discuss thisEmail thisPrint this
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