Its called the wolf hiding in sheep's clothing technique. He made us look weak so that the Aussie ministers will agree to the deal then eat them up once the deal is confirmed :p:p:p
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Australian MPs attacks PAP over SGX takeover of ASX
- Thread starter aurvandil
- Start date
Its called the wolf hiding in sheep's clothing technique. He made us look weak so that the Aussie ministers will agree to the deal then eat them up once the deal is confirmed :p:p:p
My experience with matt salleh is that if you look weak, they will tekan you more. Because of this weak statement, I think the Australian politicans will be emboldened to say a lot more nasty things about Singapore.
Australia has a "cash out" culture of doing business. Blame it on their laziness or laid back attitude... but business people there like to grow and sell their establishments instead of taking it to the next level. Maybe its the farming mentality.
They can scream and shout all they want, but the fact remains many iconic home grown aussie companies are now foreign owned: Arnott's biscuit (Campbell Soup Co), Uncle Tobys (Nestle), Promite (Mars) & Optus (Ho ching).
Willing buyer meets willing seller.
They can scream and shout all they want, but the fact remains many iconic home grown aussie companies are now foreign owned: Arnott's biscuit (Campbell Soup Co), Uncle Tobys (Nestle), Promite (Mars) & Optus (Ho ching).
Willing buyer meets willing seller.
In Singapore, the PAP would have roared loudly like a lion. Over in Australia, meowing like a kitten.
A loathsome deal that should be given bargepole treatment
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/polit...given-bargepole-treatment-20101028-175lw.html
The takeover of the Australian Securities Exchange by its Singaporean counterpart would have to be one of the most awful ideas to be forced down our throats in yonks.
The Lee family, which runs Singapore's faux democracy, has proved one of the region's most consummate oligarchs.
The Singapore government's paws are over every big enterprise in the island state, which has been described unkindly as a shopping mall with a vote in the United Nations.
When you add up the arms and agencies with holdings and cross-holdings in the exchange, the Singapore government owns more than 30 per cent of the SGX. The exchange's annual report lists as a director Lee Hsien Yang, the second son of old Harry Lee and brother of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
The state's sovereign investment arm, Temasek Holdings, has a big stake in the exchange, and its chief executive is Ho Ching, the Prime Minister's wife. Temasek is basically owned by the Ministry of Finance.
The regulator of the exchange is the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which doubles as the central bank. It is chaired by former prime minister Goh Chok Tong.
Immediately, there are legitimate perceptions of a conflict of interest as one government instrumentality is supposed to be having oversight of the stock exchange which, in turn, is required to deliver a healthy return to investors, including the government. It is into this carefully confected fiefdom that our securities exchange is being foisted.
Ho was responsible for a few disastrous investment decisions for Temasek. She plunged heavily into Shin Corp, which was partly owned by the family of former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. In Bangkok, protesters burned effigies of Lee and Ho and the deal was a factor in bringing on the political crisis that led to Thaksin's ouster and an investigation of the legality of the transaction.
Last year Ho was to have been replaced as chief executive by the former boss of BHP Billiton, Chip Goodyear, but she has clung on because his differences with the board could not be resolved.
The joint announcement from the ASX and the SGX about the impending merger was a masterpiece in promo babble. There was much about ''expanded platforms'', ''leveraging'', ''skill sets'', ''global markets'', ''organic growth'' and, of course, the ubiquitous ''brand and franchise''.
The idea is that the chairman-elect of the SGX, Chew Choon Seng, would chair the combined exchanges. Australia's David Gonski would be deputy chairman. The chief executive of the Singapore exchange, Magnus Bocker, would run the dual operation. Structurally, this is a takeover, not a ''partnering'', as the announcement would have it, although it is claimed that both exchanges will remain separate legal and locally regulated entities.
How does that work in reality? Is the one entity allowed to have different rules on disclosure and its frequency, corporate governance, short selling and broker practices?
Michael Evans of BusinessDay has been pointing out some of the difficulties. One recent feature of the SGX has been the listing of Chinese companies incorporated in Bermuda with their assets held outside Singapore. While the sun shone, everyone made hay but, when things turned cloudy, the defaults piled up. Accounting standards were not what they were supposed to be and investors have been left to whistle in the wind. Evans quotes Dean Paatsch, a risk analyst, who warns of a ''race to the bottom'' in the rules governing listed companies in the Asian region.
Because of this laxity, Chinese companies listed in Singapore are out of favour. Paatsch has a colourful turn of phrase: ''A lot of the exchanges will be prepared to drop their skirts to allow lower standards for Chinese companies to list.''
He added that our market traded at a ''governance premium'' because it was better regulated. How that governance premium can be maintained while the pressure is on to list and trade stock in Australia at the insistence of the Singapore overlords has not been explained.
We are all familiar with the shoddy human rights record of Singapore. Australia's is not perfect, either, as Lee Kwan Yew delights in pointing out. But we have yet to get to the stage of government ministers suing opposition leaders for defamation and driving them out of parliament with petitions for bankruptcy. Newspapers and magazines have also had expensive verdicts against them for criticising the government.
The Lees say they have brought these actions to protect ''democracy''.
Still, if we refused to do business with every regime that used ruthless tactics to hold power, we would be doing very little business at all.
In 2007 the Tokyo Stock Exchange bought a swag of shares in SGX. The stock went down and it sold them on to a related entity. There are plenty of warning bells going off. Caution alone dictates that we should steer clear of this deal with a bargepole.
[email protected]
A loathsome deal that should be given bargepole treatment
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/polit...given-bargepole-treatment-20101028-175lw.html
The takeover of the Australian Securities Exchange by its Singaporean counterpart would have to be one of the most awful ideas to be forced down our throats in yonks.
The Lee family, which runs Singapore's faux democracy, has proved one of the region's most consummate oligarchs.
The Singapore government's paws are over every big enterprise in the island state, which has been described unkindly as a shopping mall with a vote in the United Nations.
When you add up the arms and agencies with holdings and cross-holdings in the exchange, the Singapore government owns more than 30 per cent of the SGX. The exchange's annual report lists as a director Lee Hsien Yang, the second son of old Harry Lee and brother of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
The state's sovereign investment arm, Temasek Holdings, has a big stake in the exchange, and its chief executive is Ho Ching, the Prime Minister's wife. Temasek is basically owned by the Ministry of Finance.
The regulator of the exchange is the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which doubles as the central bank. It is chaired by former prime minister Goh Chok Tong.
Immediately, there are legitimate perceptions of a conflict of interest as one government instrumentality is supposed to be having oversight of the stock exchange which, in turn, is required to deliver a healthy return to investors, including the government. It is into this carefully confected fiefdom that our securities exchange is being foisted.
Ho was responsible for a few disastrous investment decisions for Temasek. She plunged heavily into Shin Corp, which was partly owned by the family of former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. In Bangkok, protesters burned effigies of Lee and Ho and the deal was a factor in bringing on the political crisis that led to Thaksin's ouster and an investigation of the legality of the transaction.
Last year Ho was to have been replaced as chief executive by the former boss of BHP Billiton, Chip Goodyear, but she has clung on because his differences with the board could not be resolved.
The joint announcement from the ASX and the SGX about the impending merger was a masterpiece in promo babble. There was much about ''expanded platforms'', ''leveraging'', ''skill sets'', ''global markets'', ''organic growth'' and, of course, the ubiquitous ''brand and franchise''.
The idea is that the chairman-elect of the SGX, Chew Choon Seng, would chair the combined exchanges. Australia's David Gonski would be deputy chairman. The chief executive of the Singapore exchange, Magnus Bocker, would run the dual operation. Structurally, this is a takeover, not a ''partnering'', as the announcement would have it, although it is claimed that both exchanges will remain separate legal and locally regulated entities.
How does that work in reality? Is the one entity allowed to have different rules on disclosure and its frequency, corporate governance, short selling and broker practices?
Michael Evans of BusinessDay has been pointing out some of the difficulties. One recent feature of the SGX has been the listing of Chinese companies incorporated in Bermuda with their assets held outside Singapore. While the sun shone, everyone made hay but, when things turned cloudy, the defaults piled up. Accounting standards were not what they were supposed to be and investors have been left to whistle in the wind. Evans quotes Dean Paatsch, a risk analyst, who warns of a ''race to the bottom'' in the rules governing listed companies in the Asian region.
Because of this laxity, Chinese companies listed in Singapore are out of favour. Paatsch has a colourful turn of phrase: ''A lot of the exchanges will be prepared to drop their skirts to allow lower standards for Chinese companies to list.''
He added that our market traded at a ''governance premium'' because it was better regulated. How that governance premium can be maintained while the pressure is on to list and trade stock in Australia at the insistence of the Singapore overlords has not been explained.
We are all familiar with the shoddy human rights record of Singapore. Australia's is not perfect, either, as Lee Kwan Yew delights in pointing out. But we have yet to get to the stage of government ministers suing opposition leaders for defamation and driving them out of parliament with petitions for bankruptcy. Newspapers and magazines have also had expensive verdicts against them for criticising the government.
The Lees say they have brought these actions to protect ''democracy''.
Still, if we refused to do business with every regime that used ruthless tactics to hold power, we would be doing very little business at all.
In 2007 the Tokyo Stock Exchange bought a swag of shares in SGX. The stock went down and it sold them on to a related entity. There are plenty of warning bells going off. Caution alone dictates that we should steer clear of this deal with a bargepole.
[email protected]
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