You will be more influenced by Phd rather than a master rather than a degree rather than A level rather than a O level in the speciality concerned to part your money for a rightful purpose. However, people of your rare experience are probably quite saavy and wary on the possible superficial niceties that these titles may bring. There is a difference between explanation and some other statements.

It is just like putting your money with a lawyer holding it as stakeholders funds which can get absconded. You still cut your cheque in the belief that it will get protected and this mode of payment used to be sactioned by the law until it is getting out of hand.

“To which the institution will point out that the RM was never instructed to make guarentees they could not keep, fire the bugger and the judge in whatever case you bring will ask you for proof that the FI and RM were in cahoots to cheat you. I’m no lawyer but it seems clear that your case will be then thrown out of court. ”

You are right and perhaps a lot of people have to live through this sad episode. It all depends on the judge actually.

“Having said that, Mr Tan is talking to a senior lawyer in Singapore who is going to brief a Queen’s Counsel. I’m sure the lawyers will enjoy sending their bill to you. FYI – QC’s charge fees plus expenses and they don’t fly economy and stay in Ah Meng’s Hostel in Lorong 6 Geylang. – Like it was said – this is a complex transaction and requires expert advice …..which is charged separately from the product.”

Well, this is what ‘law’ is all about. There is a price to justice as everyone can see.

- That may be but it still points to the fact that s generally have no control over movements in the stock market.

- Given that it was clear to anyone reading the news and had a wee bit of imagination that the financial markets were going to face some difficulty, why would anyone smart enough to have $50,000 plus risk plunging that money into complex financial instruments

So unless you don’t write your own cheques, I assume (I could be making an ass of myself here), most of us would ensure we knew what we were doing before writing that cheque.”

Yes for simple transactions. However for complex transactions where you need specialist guidance (the reason why prospectus come in bound booklets), what we do not need is misrepresentation from someone whose very compensation is paid to a certain extent via our cheque. Professional indemnity is precisely here for such potential problems.

-The transaction may be complex and you may need several wonderful economics PhD’s to explain it to you – but at the end of the day it’s still your choice to write the cheque. It is still your money and short of being held up at gun point, how you spend it is still up to you.

-You have stated the obvious -namely the fact that the RM is paid primarily through the cheque you write (ie most financial agents are paid primarily through comission – hence they’re driven by selling…..). So if you are smart enough to understand how the RM is paid, you should be smart enough to realise that the RM’s advise will be slanted to pursuading you to buy. If you felt you needed the independent advice, you could have gotten it from a lawyer/accountant or another investment professional.

-If you had a medical condition and wanted a second opinion, surely you would seek one. What makes you think you did not have the ability to seek a second opinion on making this investment decision.

-Did anyone actually tell you that even if the investment went South, you would be assured your principle? Did you sign any doccuments making such a point?

Agency law my friend. Who does the RM represent. Which good name of the institution is the RM riding on to close the name.

-To which the institution will point out that the RM was never instructed to make guarentees they could not keep, fire the bugger and the judge in whatever case you bring will ask you for proof that the FI and RM were in cahoots to cheat you. I’m no lawyer but it seems clear that your case will be then thrown out of court.

Having said that, Mr Tan is talking to a senior lawyer in Singapore who is going to brief a Queen’s Counsel. I’m sure the lawyers will enjoy sending their bill to you. FYI – QC’s charge fees plus expenses and they don’t fly economy and stay in Ah Meng’s Hostel in Lorong 6 Geylang. – Like it was said – this is a complex transaction and requires expert advice …..which is charged separately from the product.

Agency law my friend. Who does the RM represent. Which good name of the institution is the RM riding on to close the sales.

Tsunami, earthquakes, hurricanes are natural disasters.

“Then, let’s look at the financial sector. Unless you are Chairman of the Federal Reserve about to make an announcement about interest rates, chances are you have no control over the way the stock market moves.”

Please bear in mind the recent financial crisis was due to unchecked serious fnancial disease waiting to happen given time. Possibility, we may even see some guys being thrown into the pit to pacify widespread anger / disillusion over such a big mess.

“So unless you don’t write your own cheques, I assume (I could be making an ass of myself here), most of us would ensure we knew what we were doing before writing that cheque.”

Yes for simple transactions. However for complex transactions where you need specialist guidance (the reason why prospectus come in bound booklets), what we do not need is misrepresentation from someone whose very compensation is paid to a certain extent via our cheque. Professional indemnity is precisely here for such potential problems.

When you buy table & computers, you do not get bound prospectus but instruction manuals. However, you still can get into trouble if the products are not fit for the purpose for which it is represented to be sold.

“If the RM told you this was as good as a fixed deposit, did the prospectus say so? If the RM is telling you something vastly different from the prospectus, your issue is with a single RM not with the FI”

Agency law my friend. Who does the RM represent. Which good name of the institution is the RM riding on to close the name.

However, deciding to buy an investment product is clearly not one of these circumstances. The RM can say what he or she wants. The banks and government can say what they want. But in the end, who writes the cheque that gets things going?

So unless you don’t write your own cheques, I assume (I could be making an ass of myself here), most of us would ensure we knew what we were doing before writing that cheque. I would also assume that since we’re talking about investing hard earned money and not money we’d use to play lotto or football pools with, that we’d refrain from throwing all our life’s savings into a single investment product.

What does this mean? It means, you can listen to your RM and read the prospectus. It means you can talk to friends and it means you can do your own research on something as easy as the internet. If the RM is telling you something that is different from the prospectus, why aren’t you questioning? It is your money.

Then let’s look at the issue of risk. Perhaps my English is awful, but how much clearer can the words, “Past performance is no guarantee for future performance” Or do we wish to be as clear as the cigarette packet – “We’ve made money for the last five years but you could lose everything with us tomorrow.” Perhaps this should be the real campaign.

I would suggest that warnings on financial products and cigarettes are actually kiasu. Common sense should tell you that sucking in heated air with tar particles is bad for your lungs. It’s even more so with financial products. Unless you are locked in a bubble covered in black and placed on Mars, you are bound to hear or see and see and hear on daily basis of how financial instruments like stocks and bonds go down as well as up. You’ll bound to hear, once in a while of companies going bankrupt. All this information being thrown at you, should make you somewhat aware that financial products can go down as well as up and bankruptcy is a reality in the business world.

So before you write that cheque and sign away responsibility to the RM, I don’t see how its possible you could have not known you were taking a risk and there was a possibility that your savings could be lost and so you would have acted accordingly.

RMs not returning your calls is bad. It is bad for the relationship between you and the RM. However, its not criminal to avoid taking certain calls. Did anyone tell you an outright lie? If the RM told you this was as good as a fixed deposit, did the prospectus say so? If the RM is telling you something vastly different from the prospectus, your issue is with a single RM not with the FI

Where was the cheating? Was there a scam? Again, my English is awful and I’m just an uneducated lout with no money. But I guess a scam would be when you are sold a product which the seller knows is bad and presents it to you as wonderful as Fort Knox (And in such a way where a reasonable person would concur), and you have no other means of knowing what risk are involved. If you think of it this way, I grant a few RMs may have been overzealous in their presentation of the products – but where exactly is the massive wide scale scam? A risky product was sold and it went sour.

I’m sure Mr TKL is very affable on a personal level and its wonderful that someone is willing to replace common sense for people.

The victims cannot abdicate some personal responsibility for been careless and too trusting. But that doesn’t mean the banks and RMs can absolved themselves from this scam.
Whether you cheat a responsible man or irrespnsible man you are still a cheat, a swindler.

Can I assume that you are a non smoker? The health-warning on cigarettes packs are always written in clear & un-ambiguous statement. Completely unlike those from the bank’s prospectus, so not logical to compare smokers with the lehman “investors”
By the way, my RMs explained to me in simple, easy to understand English, not in gobbledygook, but with scenario opposite from that of the prospectus.

When these lehman fiasco broke out, everyone was very confused. No one know what to do. Most of the RMs suddenly became un-contactable. Banks said it was not their fault. The government was quiet.

Mr. Tan K.L. came to the scene only when these remain unchanged after some weeks.
He organised the victims into different groups according to their financial distributors. Sent petitions to the authority. Explained what all these credit link notes were about & taught them how to lodge complains & prepare for class-suit.
No doubt, all the actions may come to nought, but deep inside we will be forever grateful to him for doing something which actually should be done by the authority.
At least with all the publicity, the FIs agreed to pay back the vulnerable group all their deposits.
At least no one attempted suicide(hope it will never happen)

Sadman, you are spot on. Let us put it this way. Relationship nowadays is not so clear cut like in the old simple minded world.

Strong institutions built up over many years of hard work can be brought down in a few months or even days just because of weak human elements capitalizing on perfectly legal loop-holes. This so-called trust, bond or relationship is always in a constant flux depending on the “goodwill” (or badwill, if there is such a word) of the ‘trustees’ supposely appointed or hired to defend “your interest”.

I think you still do not understand the problem. The relationship between DBS/POSB and their customers has been established over 30-40 years. The TRUST & BONDS have been bulit over the years. So when the RMs approached these loyal customers by saying that High Notes products are as good as FD with 5% interest, many investors just believed them. We trust DBS just like trusting our wife. Do you check and check the drinks served to you by your wife? If it is not DBS bank, a government owned bank, I doubt there are so many innocent people get caught. If we include all the High Notes series, the number of customers get conned can easily be around 10,000. So now you are saying we should trust nobody, must check and check. So are we living in a society with no trust ? Is that our government’s fault that they have developed a country with no trust even with government linked organisations. Do you feel shameful as being a Singaporean (may be you are not) ? Why are we serving NS to defend a country with no basic human trust?

If the answer is yes, what the hell are we complaining about? If the answer is no, then why did anyone invest in something they did not understand at all.”

That is true for people like you who are reasonably ‘saavy’ (perhaps even having gone through some minor knocks which did not really result in losing big money but nevertheless a good lesson for you to become more wiser and wary) on the in and out of how commercial dealings being done these days.

Prospectus alone ? There are people of certain profile that by one look at their face combined with the usual sales small talk, you (all the more so for RMs who are supposed to be diligent in sizing up the risk profile of investors) will understand they knows little about the content of propsectus it and tha tthey are very risk averse.

Certain people here may be lucky to have the luck of life education on the “intricate” commercial nuances and behaviours. Unfortunately, not all people have these “benefits”.

Calls for these institutions, the MAS and the government to be accountable have yielded no results. We knew from the start that we will be facing a roadblock, yet, we are waiting for I don’t know what.

Put a class act together and the action of putting one in place will be enough to stirthese glass-tower people into action, if not for anything, to at least prepare to fight the class act. We would have seen better results than just waiting and meeting and waving our hands and shaking our heads and cying ourselves to sleep. Dancing a strange dance is no good to get this govt to act.

Any lawyer will tell you that class actions are infamously complex. It is no walk in the park- pardon the pun. There are so many parts to the cases eg multiple parties, multiple issues and multiple facts. Th probability of something going wrong is higher. You trusted the RM, you trusted the Banks. Have you not learned your lessons?

The banks, like tobacco companies are not pleasant to deal with. However, you cannot blame them if you do things blindly. The tobacco company has to print a warning about smoking. You cannot blame the tobacco company if you chose to smoke and get sick. Likewise, most of us go into banks and have so much financial literature thrust into our hands that surely most have at least once in our lifetime read the fine print telling us that past performance does not guarantee future performance. Granted that this is in the fine print – but it’s still there and you cannot in all honesty blame the bank if you fail to read it or read it and disregard it.

Then we have to ask ourselves, “What exactly were the conman tactics that were used?” We’ve established that the RMs did not stick guns at their customers heads. Now, did the FIs and RMs kidnap children and tell their parents to invest-or else? Perhaps the RM called so many times in the day that we decided to invest to get rid of the RM? If that were the case, its not the RM’s fault. There are other ways of dealing with an over-aggressive salesperson that don’t cost $50,000 plus.

The events at Hong Lim Park are very interesting from a newspaper perspective. But the truth is, this has nothing to do about “The People Against The Banks or even The Government.” This has everything to do with educated and well to do people abdicating their personal responsibility.

I believe that is exactly what Tang Li is saying.

Check and cross check… you owe it to yourselves. Do not trust politicians and government linked banks. We criticise the ruling party and yet in an ironic way we give them our unchecked and undivided trust. You are right also not to trust what I said. My point being that you should question it until you get a satisfactory ans. For that matter, the regime should be applied to almost anybody.

Like Tang Li, I have left my real name and calling card. We must be really stupid moles.

I agree with what you said.
Let me give you a simple analogy: “Assuming” you are taking part in the next GE, the founder of Singapore, Mr LKY recommended you as a capable candidate with integrity to the electorates and encourage us to vote for you. Will we be suspecting that you are a crook? Will we be doubting Mr LKY’s recommendation?
Similarly, HN5 was recommended to the investors, especially DBS’s Treasury members as a safe product under the brand name of DBS. All investors bought the product based on TRUST in DBS and did not doubting DBS, an internationally reputable bank, is selling a toxic product to its loyal customers. Will you be doubting DBS is using a conman tactic? Can you explain why we cannot trust DBS like we trust our PAP government , as DBS is mainly own by the government?
If you say DBS cannot be trusted, PAP government cannot be trusted, then I got nothing to say.

Yes, nobody pointed a gun to force close a sales.
How about those “apple gang” con people & those “hoax kidnapping” cases.
They also didn’t use any gun or knife. You think the victims also deserved it?

How many RMs had honestly told their clients about its danger in clear & easy to understand languages? Obviously not ! Instead, many victims were told the opposite scenario. This, make them (the RMs) in the same league as those apple gang & hoax kidnappers.

FIs in cahoot with RMs to high pressure sales these toxic products are simply cheapskates. Heard of time-share holidays, newton seafood touts, fake speakers sold in car parks?

Did you understand the DBS High Notes 5 prospectus yourself? I mean, shouldn’t this be the question that is asked of all the people who put their money into the High Notes?

If the answer is yes, what the hell are we complaining about? If the answer is no, then why did anyone invest in something they did not understand at all.

Personally, I think banks in Singapore a running a racket. However, my dislike for banks in Singapore should not colour the issue here – which is, did investors in DBS High Notes understand the basic principle of investment – namely what goes up can go down? Like other sales industries, banks do use high sales pressure techniques, but is the consumer powerless? Does the banker put a gun at your head and say I will kill you if you don’t invest?

I am an uneducated and unemployed bum (if you want to say I am a PAP mole – my answer is “I wish” – I may get paid), but this sounds to me like people who smoke for 30 odd years suing the tobacco companies for making them smoke – a case of ,”It’s Never Me.”

Incidentally, I am writing under my REAL name.

You are right. You are not only do not understand TKL’s “:prospectus”, I think you also do not understand DBS High Notes 5 prospectus, although you are an expert.

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