Yet so many unanswered questions:
What are the real reasons behind Ho Ching’s resignation?
Why is Dhana able to stay on ? perhaps he is fighting for his life there now.
Should not Oei Hong Leong be appointed an Advisor to Temasek ? Is not he a foreign talent too? and a proven risk taker who is also successful, and a donor to educational institution, and youth leadership development.

Temasek ” see bo liao” ,after all these years, they still have not learned much except from western consultants and see what they are led into!
What a pathetic state of affairs for a Singapore SWF.

Questions have been asked in Parliament about Temasek/GIC for a long long time: JB Jeyaretnam asked about GIC in 2001 among others.

Before this financial market meltdown since around end of 2007, NMP Eunice Olsen had also made a speech in Parliament expressing concern about Temasek’s performance especially in the light of the Shin Corp debacle.

What kind of replies did MPs get? Essentially the answers were, we (the govt) don’t give a damn to the questions.

AL said:

“Temasek is also not the only ‘sovereign wealth fund (SWF)’ to lose money. According to The Economist’s report on 22 January this year, “Gulf foreign-reserve funds and SWFs (the distinction is often blurry) lost $350 billion last year, or 27% of the value of their assets”.”

Why limit to the performance for the “last year” only?

#39, Anon has rightly pointed out that Temasek also owns unlisted companies like the power stations which were sold for a total of about S$12 billion; PSA etc.

It is therefore totally misleading to compare Temasek’s performance with the MSCI or whatever indices which happen to be convenient advantageous to Temasek.

AL said:

“Finally, Temasek is not plagued with structural financial problems. While it may have bled money in Barclays and Merrill Lynch, and also encountered problems with Shin Corp and the Indonesian government, it has made other sound investments too, such as in the Bank of China and China Construction Bank.”

Temasek’s purchases of Bank of China & China Construction Bank were made pre-IPO and many other financial institutions also made money eg, Bank of America, UBS, RBS………so no plus for Temasek.

As for Merrill Lynch, Temasek did not just “bled money”, it is a dead loss if not rescued by the US taxpayers.

Our ruling party always preaches continue Good Governance
But the process by which decisions are implemented is in actual fact ‘In Denial’

100% TRUE To The Core !!!!!

In a way, our SWFs want to have their cake and eat it too. They hope that the markets will not discriminate against them and accept and trust them like any other institutional investors based on purely commercial considerations. Yet, they want to justify their secrecy by appealing for understanding in their role as guardians of national assets. So, what you are witnessing is market resistance to such persuasions.

Dear #73 “To smallvoice585″,

Yes, investing is ultimately a form of gambling, as long as there is no guarantee of profit or gain. In fact, life is one big gamble. You step onto the street – that’s a gamble. You marry a girl – that’s a gamble. You buy a 2nd-hand car – that’s a gamble too. So, gambling is not such a dirty word after all. But, if you don’t step onto the street, you will be house-bound; don’t marry the girl, you’ll never know family bliss; don’t buy the car, and you’ll not experience the joy of driving the BMW! That’s life – no venture, no gain!

I feel that this 40 years, a solution would have been developed to lessen drastically the reliance on export. Yes, based on small population, Import economy is difficult. But then solutions are meant to solve diff problems. Talents are paid to do such a job.

Everything in life is about politics and self-interest. It is a matter of semantics and scale lah. You convince (politicise) by focusing on certain point of your advantage on specific matter lah.

So what do you think of the political goals of any incumbent party in the whole world or our country. Don’t they politicise matters in order to cut their opponents. Or maybe you prefer they tell the story of “Sleepy Beauty”.

The people must know all this and be clear minded on whether the politicised issue is indeed serious enough affecting his own personal interest in such a way as to merit serious consideration in the way he makes his decision in the ballot box.

Yeah, you are right. And as most of us already know, it further reinforces that investment = gambling. So why not give it to us and let us do it ourselves. Individual losses are isolated and small. Some of us (those poor ones and on basic survival mode) may even use it not for gambling but for basic essential items.

Talking about staying cool when your chips (and ours also) are down, you will only get to know it in the end when it is really empty (perfect transparency) with heavy costs and no way of rectification. If it is your chips alone, who cares. If some of the chips are also mine (e.g CPF), I definitely care.

So what do you think of the coolness of those investment banks of the past, very cool right ?

If present-day SWFs are commercial entities, why are they being scrutinised as politically motivated government funds?

Yes, you’re right about UK’s Commonwealth Development Capital (CDC) Group being founded in 1948. But it is quite a different animal because its aims are different. It was borne out of Britain’s reluctance to relinquish its influence in its former colonies.

Present-day SWFs are ostensibly behaving like pure commercial entities, no different from any mutual or hedge fund. In fact, if you had been reading the papers over the last year or 2, there was talk of establishing international guidelines on the conduct and investment policies of SWFs.

If you understand that the commercial viability of Temasek and GIC are intimately tied to our geopolitics and national survival, you will not be screaming for unrestricted transparency from our SWFs.

If you have just lost a high-stakes game of poker, would you tell all the players at the table how much more money you have left in your brief-case? Would you lament aloud what mistakes you have made in that last game? No! The smart thing to do is to smile, stay cool, take notice of the lessons learnt and give the others the impression that your brief-case is actually quite bottomless!

And I thank you for your time…I wasn’t expecting a reply from you.”

The strange thing about internet is that you get screwed whether you like it or not. Not real lah. Analogy lah.

How can we solve the problem ? Well if those premium-rated sirloin steaks cannot solve our sickness if it is not our sickness. You are probably in the wrong steak house.

Hey, perhaps, this thread is not suitable for you if you are looking for “feasible opinions”.

No loss, no need to search for “feasible opinions”.

Don’t create dirt in the first place so that you won’t have the opportunity to look down on those cleaners who may not be skillful enough to clear your dirt.

And yea, that’d probably be the fastest way to save more lives..but we’re not talking about a real murderer now, for a murderer need not be replaced by a better one, but a government, yes. We probably need a better one.

Now don’t take my comment too seriously…I’m not looking for an argument on the two of us talking solutions or what not, let’s go back to our current problems an how we can solve them.

And I thank you for your time…I wasn’t expecting a reply from you.

Remove the culprit. That is the solution. Removing the corpse is only removing the symptom.

‘Minimize our damages’ will still leave the culprit around. And mind you, with pre-existing pysche, further damages may still result.

Thank you! Really! Thank you! Your posts are the type I was looking for!

I was losing hope of anyone giving any feasible opinions…and getting quite bored at many mindless ranting above.

And to clarify a few things with the guys here….I NEVER said recouping losses would be easy, my only point being it’s something we’re stuck with now.

#50)
“Do not expect some magician to bring a person back to life if you have chopped off his head. Talking about solutions somemore.”

You’re telling me that you’re gonna just leave his corpse to rot. For a solution doesn’t necessary means reviving him, it could be hiding his corpse so no one finds out. I just want us to minimize our damages, not cure them.

@Harry, again:

Hahaha…..perhaps you’re right that I have dangerous values…but what you’ve suggested was what I’ve been trying to put across to the others in words. But I’m bad at thinking up ideas…and probably just as bad in accounting as I am with my english.

” Singaporeans must pressurised the pap government to act to reduce the risk our managers are taking with our reserves. The risk perimeter and control must ge tighten to limit any future losses. This must be rectified before they lose all our hardearned money.”

Agree with you totally on this…but I have no clue what you mean when you speak of either punishing them or doing nothing to encourage them to take more risks. Because punishment comes in many different forms, and voting them off could be what you’re thinking, and what I could be also thinking.

The questions you have….are you already getting to the answers? Or perhaps we need a bigger medium to get these questions answered? Or you’re waiting for the bigger personals to raise these during a parliament session…is there anything I can do? I’m a lazy bum, but if it’s worth it the People might just take notice.

SWFs are not recent development. One of the oldest SWFs in the world is the UK’s Commonwealth Development Capital (CDC) Group. CDC is jointly owned by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department For International Development (DFID). CDC Group was founded in 1948 to extend and continue UK’s influence in its former colonies’ economy. The West which created the first SWF now fears what it had invented. In asking Asian SWFs to be transparent, we are also demanding the West to do the same too.