Wow.. so 11.1% stake in a worthless bank! Well done... GIC. So
what's left to say? Can they finally admit that their investment is
terrible when non-professional people in the forum have been
pointing it out to them 1-2 years ago?
Anyway, why do you think GIC converted their 7% yielding
prefered shares for common stock that pays 1 cent dividend? That's
because Citigroup suspended dividend payments on prefered shares
today!! So lan lan GIC have to convert. The ST media then GIC being
valiant and a good sport trying to help the US cause to shore up
equity base for Citigroup, when there's no other better alternative
for GIC. At least they can butter up relationships with US by
converting to common shares. Otherwise, I am sure GIC would have
prefered to collect 7% on their 10 bil up front purchase for the
next few years.
So much for Tony Tan's ingenious comment about long term
investments. I guess his definition of long term is 1 year. Anyway,
all the banks except Barclays that GIC/Temasek have bought is going
to be nationalized eventually and equity stake will be wiped out
with debt stake greatly diminished. It's easy to note that Temasek
would have lost more than 31% by now.
I hope the Govt don't claim they have exceptional talent in
their civil service anymore. As we have witnessed with our own
eyes, talented people paid with astronomical salaries in the
financial sector have totally destroyed the global economy with
their greed. We have a similar situation in the govt service, where
we assemble highly talented people paid with exceptional salaries
(Obviously these individuals are greedy otherwise why would they
only serve the country for high salaries). Would Singapore collapse
like the banks do? After all Singapore is run like a
corporation.
One gripe is I don't get why Temasek and GIC invest the hundreds
of billions they had into Singapore industries. Give free education
to it's citizens, foster innovation, support local industries like
Creative and transform them into world class firms .. instead they
invest it in foreign firms and lose it all.
At least if the money was lost in supporting local firms like
Creative or Chartered Semiconductor, I won't feel that
bad!
It's easy to note that Temasek would have lost more than 31% by
now.
It was reported in the media as 31% but someone here in Sgforums
recalculated and pointed out that it was almost
54%.
see http://sgforums.com/forums/10/topics/347781#post_8834460 14 Feb `09,
1:20PM
