DBS has said it would take responsibility if customers are able to give evidence of mis-selling in relation to products affected by the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Now, let’s look at the profile of some of these poor souls who lost their money. These are a few of them which I gathered from searching Google:
- 60-year-old retiree Tham Wai Wah (who has only an O-level education): S$ 125,000.
- 59-year-old retiree who only wanted to be known as Mrs Lim: S$25,000.
These are just the reported cases. Ask around and you will find friends telling you that their own elderly parents have been approached to invest in some of these products. In fact, ask your own elderly parents if they have been approached when they go down to the bank to either withdraw their matured Fixed Deposit (FD), or to start a new one. Mine has been, and I thanked God none of these products they are ‘advised’ to put their money in are Lehman related. Better still, some of these products are maturing in 2 months.
Now, can anyone honestly dare said these old folks understood what a structured product is and all the risks behind it? Why do we hear that some of these people lost their entire life savings? Why, is it even sold to old folks whose original idea was simply to earn some honest interest from fixed deposits?
I spoke with my dad on one of the products he has placed some money into, and all he could tell me was that the guy who sold it to him told him this: Principal guaranteed, and even if the markets is doing badly he could earn 10%.
And this appears to be the same thing I am reading about these old folks who lost their money. To me, it is obvious that this is mis-selling. But solid proof of this will be hard to come by. I am quite sure some of these old folks probably couldn’t even remember who sold the product to them, nor could they find that particular staff anymore and ‘interrogate’ them. Just how on earth are investors going to prove the mis-selling without a full recording of the entire series of events leading up to their decision to invest into that product?
No wonder my friend’s comment said this when he was told of the above news: “如果我呃你，我老咗会死！” [It losely translates as – If I have bluffed / cheated you, I will die when I get old.]
And I can’t help but agree with his comment.
By the way, I heard Hong Kong, Macau and Australia have all guaranteed 100% of deposits in banks. When will Singapore, with its immense reserves do the same? With all the money around for the GIC and Temasek to invest everywhere, can’t the government gahmen even do this little bit to assure its citizens?
Comics:
Recommendations:
Good reads:
The Online Citizen (Rachel Chung): How much does the Government care?
Communplugged: Metrics Are So Yesterday!
Other news:
Local blog aggregator ping.sg pR0n.sg has gotten a face lift and new features. Lycan Times gathered that users who contribute their posts to it may now choose to keep ‘ponging’ of their posts private. This means registered users who read the posts which are not well liked and yet fears repurcussion will now be hidden from the public.
Either way, it’s a useless feature when one look at the current state of the Top 10. It is clear that few are really concerned with being exposed for ponging the lar sup (dirty) aka ‘NSFW’ (Not Safe For Work) posts. The fear of ‘exposure’ was nothing more than a speed bump previously. Allowing them to pong anonymously now simply means they will now be ponging such post with abandon and bring the domination of NSFW posts in the Top 10 to new heights.
On top of this change, there is now ‘community based’ features so only blog posts of friends will be listed. It maybe a wonderful feature so you don’t miss your friends’ post, but you can do the same using an online RSS reader such as Google Reader. Either way, after looking at the screen shots on some of the blogs reporting this feature, the layout reminded me of either blogcatalog or mybloglog.
Personal Opinion: It’s to pR0n.sg just as Aero is to Windows Vista.