GIC Chairman MM Lee continues his judgmental blunders

last SG · 2008-05-03T01:19:28+00:00

Oh my that's really convenient. I can see now where all his money coming from.I think it's pretty much like mafia extorting money from its neigbourhood econo...

Atobe SG

Hey....dont go overboard please...

robertteh, you are losing more and more of your sight. Your argument is just mish-mashing and lumping everything together. Just because you have a dislike towards LKY, which I agree is rather authoritarian, but it doesnt mean it is relevant or logical to turn this critisism into the GIC performance.

First of all, GIC performace is not bad.

Not bad at all.

Didnt u all remember some time ago, the performance was made public? Performance of the past 25 years. I remember it was pretty good.

Some people here said its not much better than index.

But, a time period spanning 25 years, a quarter of century, of course it is not odd that it follows the index. The index IS the market. Do you wish to see a government investment arm choosing risky investment with the aim to beat the market aggressively, something like hedge funds..? Dont forget government authority has a serious responsibility, and cannot be expected to operate like private money managers, many of whom, by the way, cannot beat the index, especially in the long term, 25 years.

So that is one.

Secondly and most importantly, I dont understand how you can quote some cases of underperforming investments and assign the blame to LKY.

Who is LKY...? Do you really believe he spent his time assessing those investments and made the decisions..?

Even a layman like me can guess, that kind of work is done by the middle managers and upper managers. At most LKY is given a briefing and asked for approval. Or maybe not. At most LKY is giving his direction. Actually what is his position..? If Im not wrong he is the chairman. Chairman, 80+ years oldman, in an investment firm. He is just like an honorary person. Do you seriously believe it is logical to quote these cases to assign blame to LKY? Do you think a big firm like GIC works based on individual decision making, by a LKY, or by collective decision making..?

So I guess, you are just making something out of nothing. Or maybe mixing too much ingredients into your soup, that u confuse urself, cannot differentiate anything anymore, whether your argument actually has any logic or merit in it.

Meat Pao.

Surely, you do not believe that a decision to invest US$10 Billion is left to upper and middle managers only ?

Do you believe that an investment of US$10 Billion do not involved any final say from MM LKY and perhaps involving the advise and nod from fellow Board of Directors - all handpicked and received the nod from MM himself, which include Dr Tony Tan.

From past release of statements made by the other Founding Fathers who were Ministers in LKY's cabinet - LKY will often debate his ideas with his trusted ministers that included DPM Toh Chin Chye, Finance Minister Dr Goh Keng Swee, Foreign Minister Rajaratnam, and later this inner circle include Hon Sui Sen,

For the last 50 years, the final say rest with LKY.

Even when he is now an MM, his blessing was needed before PM LHL could announce that Singapore will have two Integrated Resort facilities - and this hard rule of not having any dealings with casino operation for the last 50 years was finally broken.

MM LKY not involved ?

He even claimed that from his grave, he will even rise up to settle any deals that he felt was wrong.

With all these wrong dealing that come nto place one after another for the last ten years, he will surely have to answer to all the others who will rise up from their graves.

eagle SG

He even claimed that from his grave, he will even rise up to settle any deals that he felt was wrong.

Hahahaha

googoomuck SG

Ex-citigroup CEO Charles Prince brought in MM LKY as special advisor to Citigroup but what happened?

balance_else_complacent SG

Ex-citigroup CEO Charles Prince brought in MM LKY as special advisor to Citigroup but what happened?

how many years already he engaged by them?

Meat Pao SG

I disagree.

For instance maybe we can compare to something similar, a big company:

Microsoft.

Bill Gates now has become a chairman. What does he do? Shake leg, sing song, appear at media events. Actually now he spend more time doing something else, charity.

Microsoft is a very big organization, and not directed or decided by Bill Gates alone. Do you agreee with me?

Recently Microsoft made a bid to Yahoo.

It is a collective decision making, and whether the bid goes through or not, and whether it will be sucessful or not in terms of business strategy, it is not a blame or a glory attributable to a single person, named Bill Gates. It is an organizational decision.

This is what I dont like when I read these kind of exaggerated claims, LKY is at fault for Shin Corp etc.

Firstly, organizational decision doesnt mean u can pinpoint the fault to the chairman.

Secondly, actually in balance, the performance is not bad, which means, if u want to pinpoint blame, where are your other fingers pointing praise for the past successes?

Personally for me, just as I dont believe LKY is at fault for Shin Corp, Shenzen etc, I also dont believe LKY is a hero for the past GIC successes.

And that is why I say, the robertteh's argument is abit like mixing too much ingredients in a soup that he confuse himself.

Unless if he bring forward a concrete example of LKY individual wrongdoing, for instance that LKY has shown a 'lone ranger' judgement and veto-ed his whole board, or his managers recommendations. Then in that case we can logically say, LKY, yes, individually he is at fault and has shown 'judgemental blunders' against the collective wisdom.

In absence of such thing, then Im afraid robertteh viewpoint does not carry much validity.

Meat Pao.

robertteh SG

Meat Pao,

It is not that people don't understand decision making process in a big organization as you have put it.

What we the people are finding it difficult to accept is the constant harping of talents and abilities of various individuals called leaders who are actually lucky people given the opportunity to be leaders who as leaders have to accept responsibilities for poor performance and criticisms for mistakes.

If as leaders they do not and cannot accept responsibilities for mistakes or losses then in the first place they do not have qualities of leaders, period.

Proceeding from the above-stated basis, have our leaders like MM Lee plainly accepted the first principle of governmnet or leadership - accepting responsibilities for poor performance whether in specific examples of loss like in Shin Corp all these years?

If GIC is an entirely private company like Worldcom or Enron, we the people can accept what you said that decision making is not a simple or easy process and people must take the good decisions with the bad ones and judge them for overall performance.

GIC is an public organization set up to safeguard the collective assets and surpluses of Singaporeans and its monies are people's hard-earned monies. All on board of GIC are trustees of public fund. As trustees of public fund if they want to invest in Shin Corp or UBS (in a crisis situation) Bangalore or Russsia Township they as trustees must get the mandate of the people. Have they done so?

If LKY is to set up GIC correctly he would have to invest such trust funds more prudently than this. Well and good with some luck he has made some gains in the past despite refusing to be accountable for this type of high-risk investments. He has through use of power refused to grant ex-president Ong Teng Cheong request to provide him as custodian elected president to make GIC and government accountable to some investments and that was a major error or judgmental blunder on his part.

As a lawyer himself he should know fully well that public monies like MCST's funds can only legally be invested under the current general laws in trust funds consisting mainly of fixed deposits in banks or certain instruments not like what he is doing with public monies in the GIC.

So there are two sets of laws here - one for himself and his GIC and one for the MCST or NKF monies belonging to the public. Is his action as a leader legally right or morally correct?

Having seen the way he has been conducting the affairs of government vis-a-vis investments of people monies it will be clear that he does not want to be accountable to the people despite many years of people's unhappiness in this respect as published in the media and in the internet.

The main issue when people now are talking about the further billions of losses by GIC in rash investments in risky shares and stocks overseas is simply one - is GIC being accountable ?

If GIC is being accountable and is following certain prescribed rules and regulations and laws to safeguard people hard-earned monies (not LKY's certainly) we can then listen to your or his other points about investments being not an easy process and it is organizational decisions and not his own.

Let the issue be understood in greater perspective and not be sidetracked as the media has been doing all the time with denials to ex-president Ong and so many feedbacks on this issue from the people (not just the internet forumers).

Meat Pao SG

Hi...

I think I understand a few main points in ur reply, which are the need for accountability of GIC, and the need for leaders to be responsible, to accept critism and feedback.

These I agree very much.

However some of the arguments, are not logical application of these principles.

For instance a comparison is made between GIC and NKF, and how there is a difference of treatment. Yes of course, but isnt it obvious? Shouldnt that be a non-issue? And then there is a suggestion of asking for people's mandate for GIC decisions.

Well, those are probably not so good elaboration of the above principles of accountability, and how leaders should be responsible.

There is another one intriguing though, about President Ong asking in the past, to know more data. This I feel, is more logical, and in fact the formal rule as it should be, so it is a valid point to make, and indeed one can raise the subject, whether the current president has carried out this particular duty, and whether this safeguard is in place. I would agree with this point.

Meat Pao.

maurizio13 SG

some folks must be pretty high on hallucinogenics.

they actually think that Singapore is run by a group of philanthropistic democratic politicians who would

sacrifice themselves for the benefit of her citizens. nothing could be further from the truth.

they actually think that votes of individual politicians and the citizens they represent are taken into account.

have we not heard from our great MM, that the feelings and thoughts of her citizens is inconsequential to his decisions.

i wonder what vote was there to have MM & SM, are they of the best interest to Singaporeans.

the only other regime that has this sort of policy are the old Qing Dynasty and North Korea.

i wonder what benefit was derived from the appointment of a dead president to eternal president of korea done

for the people.

some folks also distorting the lines between a failed acquisition and a money losing acquisition.

Microsoft (MS) acqusition of Yahoo failed probably because MS did the number crunching and set a maximum bid for the share price of Yahoo.

a share price that MS would be able to make a profit from the acquisition. whether the acqusition is a failure of success is an open ended question.

of course they could have paid a much higher share price to make the acquisition a success, but ultimately is the acquisition beneficial to the current

MS shareholders. are they going to make a profit for the MS shareholders?

whereas the Singapore government fund like Temasek acquired companies like Global Crossing, Merill Lynch, Shin Corp, Suzhou Industrial Park

& Optus have made losses. if a merger & acquisition has gone wrong in MS, I am sure some bloke's head would be on the chopping block.

in all of these companies, they were over enthusiastic with the acquisition resulting in over paying of the share price, in some cases write-off

of goodwill were done after the first year of operation (a clear sign of overpayment).

whereas a minister in charge of a ministry has allowed a known terrorist to escape, yet able to remain in office is baffling.

the only reason he still remains in that post is because of his close relations to the Emperor.

mau pao

Uncle Ver SG SG

"Bill Gates now has become a chairman. What does he do? Shake leg, sing song, appear at media events. Actually now he spend more time doing something else, charity."

LKY does not do the above mentioned. There is more evidence suggesting that the final decision of many decisions still lie with him than not.

maurizio13 SG

"Bill Gates now has become a chairman. What does he do? Shake leg, sing song, appear at media events. Actually now he spend more time doing something else, charity."

LKY does not do the above mentioned. There is more evidence suggesting that the final decision of many decisions still lie with him than not.

i think this shows that the old man is self centered & selfish, reluctance to help the less privileged of Sg society.

he'd rather use the funds available to him for overseas travel.

Medicated Oil SG

The old man and mercenaries that he have groomed have only one thing in common.

That is to suck more money from the peasants.

Peasants are fined and jailed for being fare cheat, can we sue the transport company for discrepancies in deducting the ezlink card ?

The ridiculous idea is that they will raise the town council fee if they find more rubbish.

For that to be implemented, they have installed numerous camera at the hdb flat to monitor the situation.

Can the peasant money be better used ?

Greed and more greed is the driving force for the poodles now.

Medicated Pao.

Uncle Ver SG SG

"For that to be implemented, they have installed numerous camera at the hdb flat to monitor the situation."

They are much more vigilant at doing this kind of inconsequential nonsense than monitoring MSK.

CannyOng SG

Singaporeans do not query their premature jumping in to acquire bank assets which have caused a big dent in our surpluses.

It is because they do not query due to many years of abuse of power of such nature that MM Lee can continue to talk like this - more acquisition to make wrong decisions in premature jumping in look better.

In the first place Warren Buffet with better judgmental faculty will never jump in to get burned for years hoping for eventual recovery.

This kind of thinking is power or rash decision making based on gut feel and the fact the surpluses are not his own monies.

A better and more mature judgmental decision is at least to wait for the dust to settle in big financial crisis to see where one can pick and choose good buy and not straightaway assume that what goes down must come up automatically.

This is MM Lee's big mistake in both Shin Corp and UBS buys and he did not even understand enough such simple investment strategy and has the cheek to ask the people to try to make a second guess or make two wrongs to have one right.

What brain or ability has he to sit as an investment guru on board of GIC with this type of bad record anyway?

He is a lawyer not investor. Of cos he no good like Warren Buffet la. :D

anonymous_dickhead SG

Now after losing so many billions of people's hard-earned monies in such a rash manner he is still not seeing his own folly and beginning to give excuses. If he had been more insightful UBS would be indeed a good long-term buy but not the purchase he had made which is rash.

To be exact, they have not lost the money yet. It's all paper lost at the moment and the government bought preferred stocks which guarantees an 8% return. So technically, while I agree they made a lousy decision to get in so quickly, I think the government would eventually turn out profitable in this one.

The fact is, they are investing your money which the people will not be drawing out; so they can hold as long as they wish too (at zero impact). And if the stock has not recovered by then (I hope not), they could simply increase the withdrawal age again to buy more time.

Remember, they are investing with your money... not theirs. It's a matter of using your money to make money which they then claim to be their own.

GIC gives money to Temasek; a private investment firm not liable to the government. If the money is lost, they are not accountable or liable. If they make money, it does not go back to the people but becomes their profit. Temasek is just like a super remiser - win or loose, they still win.

Miracles&Prophecies SG

Remember, they are investing with your money... not theirs. It's a matter of using your money to make money which they then claim to be their own.

If like dat all Singaporeans actually work their sweat to make money for LKY family ai ya...but is it like dat actually?

All the money invested only by Temasek?? no other investment firm? Not through tender? Temasek you said is a private firm. So then it's nepotism... so that's how they got all their money from....tommorrow I'll set up an investment firm like Temasek in Indonesia lah. If like dat in Singapore also can in Indonesia...

balance_else_complacent SG

If like dat all Singaporeans actually work their sweat to make money for LKY family ai ya...but is it like dat actually?

we sweating for them? you mean, the family has shares or receives money from almost all companies related directly or indirectly to gobbymen, in both private and public sectars?

i no no leh.

t_a_s SG

The last thing LKY would do is charity. He is not a generous person.

lotus999 SG

The old man and mercenaries that he have groomed have only one thing in common.

That is to suck more money from the peasants.

Peasants are fined and jailed for being fare cheat, can we sue the transport company for discrepancies in deducting the ezlink card ?

The ridiculous idea is that they will raise the town council fee if they find more rubbish.

For that to be implemented, they have installed numerous camera at the hdb flat to monitor the situation.

Can the peasant money be better used ?

Greed and more greed is the driving force for the poodles now.

Medicated Pao.

and when you forget to put in your cash card at erp gantry they make you pay a fine of $10 on top of the erp amount. but when they refund any excess in ezlink charges they only refund the exact amount and you have to go all the way there to claim back your money. why they never compensate us for the inconvenience caused?

Atobe SG

Remember, they are investing with your money... not theirs. It's a matter of using your money to make money which they then claim to be their own.

Unfortunately for you and every Singaporean - while we believe that the money invested by the GIC and Temasek belongs to Singaporeans, this does not hold true to the MIW and the POWER of ONE.

They truly believe that this annual surplus money transferred from the Finance Ministry to the GIC and Temasek belongs to them, as it is through their ingenuity in managing a Government Surplus at the end of each Financial Year - by over taxing Singaporeans through a gamut of creative money collecting schemes.

While every country will treat the Annual Surplus as National Reserves, this Political Party - that form the Singapore Government for the last 50 odd years - has got it into their heads that the money rightfully belong to them.

The best part of the whole scam is that - if there are any profits generated from the investments made by GIC and Temasek - the profits remain with GIC and Temasek PLUS the Principal Sums that were originally transferred from the Financy Ministry.

These are continuously rolled over in the accounts of GIC and Temasek, and with the Singapore National Reserve continuously drawn down in total secrecy from any Parliamentary oversight, or even from any independent political supervision.

The MIW - under the stewardship of MM LKY - have even passed legislation to prevent any new inoming Government from ''accessing'' the Previous Accumulated Operating Reserves to fund any new Programmes for Singaporeans.

This regulations was drawn up under the pretext of denying any rougue Political Party from promising the "Heaven and Earth'' to win any Election.

So it seems that PM LHL's Government was supposed to be a NEW Cabinet - even if it is from the existing or incumbent Political Party, yet it was given free access to the Reserves accumulated by the previous Goh Chok Tong Government.

And the scam continues - with the same MIW passing legislations like unquestioning sheep - that authorise the Government to pay themselves exorbitant wages to supervise the continuous grand scheme to empty the private wealth held by Singaporeans.

The MIW Government has always made a big deal in boasting the annual pay out of S$1 Billion Plus to Singaporeans, that resulted in pittance paid out to Singaporeans that amount from $200 to $1800 per household, with the larger amounts forming a small percentage.

This amount is nothing compared to what the MIW Government had taken from Singaporeans, and the multifareous financial traps that are in place to take back the same amount or more then what has been paid out annually.

If the Money is truly ours, and LKY and his Board of Directors are mere honorary custodians - then they should have the social sense of accountability towards Singaporeans, by answering to the Peoples' Representatives elected into Parliament.

The annual financial status of GIC and Temasek Holdings should clearly and transparentaly reported, instead of hiding their operations behind a convenient excuse of National Security.

This act of refusal to hold themselves accountable even to Parliament, clearly show the attitude of LKY and his MIW team towards the SURPLUS Public Money transferred from the Finance Ministry to GIC and Temasek.

anonymous_dickhead SG

we sweating for them? you mean, the family has shares or receives money from almost all companies related directly or indirectly to gobbymen, in both private and public sectars?

i no no leh.

They receive money for directorship and as board members. They also draw big fat pay checks for "being the only one capable of doing the job right"...

If you are the PM of Indonesia and controls 100% of all vital infrastructure through friends and relatives that you have their 100% loyalty for protecting against any blunders they make (Telecom, Power, Transport, Union, Military and Investment), you can start a private company and place your wife as the chariman/CEO; then fund this private company using the country's wealth garnered from over charging it's citizen.

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