Assortments

1.       Nightmare / Premonition

The message was stark and clear – I continue with this tomfoolery / monkeying / misbehaviour and all that impacts on iman and taqwa levels, and I am at the very end of the boundary of practicing muslims. The image of joining Friday prayers only for tasyahhud just before salam and just slightly better than the deceiving people at the back who are laughing, joking their way contrasts with the image of the thousands of muslims performing prayers with khusyu’ and devotion to Allah.

Point is to be fully absorbed in all my actions hereafter.

 

2.       4^th consecutive defeat for Liverpool

There are now calls for his head. Ridiculous! But there have been too many ridiculousness in the decision-making these past few years to suggest that it cannot happen. In my own opinion, Rafa should be given the space to work – he has proven he can overcome adversity, errors, poor decision-making and he has not shown tobe big enough not to admit his poor judgment. What better criteria can you place upon people attempting to compete with better-endowed rivals other than those above? Of course, this is also a results business, and if results cannot be sustainably be achieved, he should go. But there needs to be a calmer response to the situation, and perhaps the return of G&T will help to turn this around.

 

On the other hand, what this has shown is how much we have overachieved given the resources available, and it is a credit to Rafa that we are performers in the CL (as compared to Mourinho’s Inter, and Chelsea’s records over the past 5 years with equivalent or better resources, and I would think ManU’s CL win and runnerup in the past 5 years is comparable to Rafa’s record) It is in the league that he has fallen short, and unfortunately when expectations are higher this year following last season’s extremely strong finish, the transitory stage this year has pulled down results. To reiterate, Rafa needs time to turn things around, given Alonso’s departure and injuries to key personnel – and I include Aquilani in this as he IS the replacement for Alonso, given that he was the guy we purchased with the money from Alonso’s sale.

 

Failure to get a result against ManU will be painful – but if the performance resembles Lyon’s and Sunderland’s 2^nd half, it can only accelerate Rafa’s departure. There are pretty irrational people in Anfield these days – including the booing terrace-goers (IMO they are not fans)

 

3.       Insider trading at Galleon and McKinsey partner implicated

Following on from the impatient and amoral people theme, (although I had not included G&H in the Liverpool theme above considering their promises upon their takeover), the Rajaratnam?, Sri Lankan founder of the largest tech hedge fund, Galleon, is implicated in insider trading deals in 2007. Also implicated is an Indian national Anil Kumar, a partner in McKinsey.

 

These are hedge funds, already an amoral speculative financial instrument with too much power for its own good coming from its ability to leverage other people’s money manifold. How can something speculative such as this be allowed to operate given its power to move markets isn’t an inherent strength, but rather, built on greed on profit-making. Hence, their trade is based upon using derivative instruments to manage risks, and the nature of the beast is that they will continue to speculate and bend rules to make money for their funders / investors. The surprise is that it has taken this long to implicate one in an insider trading scandal- and that too using wiretaps. That should leave the financial analysts / stockbrokers / fund managers who’s been doing for too long running scared.

 

If I sound a bit bitter about it, perhaps I am. Engineers, and those in the professional services dealing in the real economy has been getting a raw deal from these market-movers getting a slice out of the billions sloshing around through insanely unregulated ways. It’s about time, although I should add that the law will take its natural course and clear those who are innocent.

 

4.       Work and technology

Speaking of tech, I should limit myself to Ind Biotech from here onwards. Otherwise, it’s just too large an elephant to swallow. But having said that, looking beyond my scope, I also seek to deepen my interest in RE, Education and Agriculture. And all these require a bit more than just passing remarks here and there – there should be real commitment and deep interest to sustain this. Hedghogs will also require that there is an execution emphasis for all these!

 

5.       Leadership stresses and faultlines

Conflicts in my departmental meetings are rare given how monotonously monologue it has been – but it’s interesting when personal attacks are allowed in this meeting. At the same time, I feel that it is a bit shallow to attack people for not meeting, there is probably a bit more than that which meets the eye, and there are probably underlying circumstances which demand that changes will have to be made. I’m an optimist – I expect big changes to happen in the next 6 months. Or maybe, I should make that I’m suddenly depressed about things now!

 

 

Initial thoughts on scenarios

1.       It appears that there is general acceptance of the mediocrity of the Malaysian economic growth story amongst the policymakers, and there is general readiness to embrace the change. Without the chest-thumping of politicians, “omphaloskepsis” or navel-gazing has turned to a somewhat muted and pessimistic outlook.

2.       So where to now? Ideas of a high-growth model to bring us out of the income trap has surfaced, though it is noted perhaps more of the rhetorics of grandeur it generates rather than any solid substantial plans as of this moment. Perhaps it is still early stages, but when government ministers seem to be preoccupied with their personal KPI setting for what they have done before, and rather mundane NKRAs that it’s looking at currently, who’s looking at what to do next? EPU and MOF seems to be focusing on hot to replace ‘loss’ of Bumiputra rights and what to do with a shiringking treasury. Personally, someone mentioned in the KMF recently that Stiglitz and Sen has proposed a different set of measures to look at growth and progress, and it should be one where the general betterment of the populace should be prioritized, and I do agree with this view wholeheartedly.

3.       Back to my own scope – tech and biotech. I’d think that our success in this area, with expectations of this being the focal point of the economic growth story, is important. While personally I think the expectations are rather overblown, mainly from the perspective that there has been limited domestic success models currently, and growth potential is curtailed by our lack of capacity amongst technocrats, scientists, investors, researchers and financiers.

4.       However, looking forward, success is predicated on three dimensions – execution capability, funding capacity and sustainable demand pipeline. We could perhaps draw four discrete scenarios across these soft drivers, (as opposed to predetermined hard drivers of ageing population, oil / gas shocks, etc):

-          Green: successful coevolution of the three critical development factors outlined above

-          Dry wells: progress on a global front, but we’re left further behind as we fail to leverage our execution and funding capacity-building

-          Desert: global pipeline dries up as countries ramp up their domestic focus in the face of sluggish global economic conditions, and while decoupling may not be realised, but effectively demonstrated through raised trading barriers

-          Status quo: we plod along, celebrate the little successes which come our way, overcome the little curveballs that gets thrown into our path ever so regularly by our regulators, partners and businesses

5.       Preparation across all four scenarios entails:

-          Continuous engagement and mobilization of the various entities and stakeholders in this Greening project\

-          Engaging private financiers and incorporating their acceptance of biotech as an asset class early

-          Remodeling and incentivizing local and foreign players to step up into the Malaysian-centric perspective

-          Finalising and creating buyin of LS subsectors that the country would need to participate in

Assortments

Taman Desa, Kuen Cheng and Menara IGB

1.       I’m impressed with the Chinese community’s strengths in business and finance after looking at these three, hardly iconic, but manifestations of their expertise and community teachings.

2.       Taman Desa is a township with heavy Chinese features – where trading and commerce in heavy services and machinery is all too prevalent, presumably began and continued since mid19th century. Kuen Cheng is a private Chinese primary school, whose buildings and layout is more reminiscent of a tertiary level malayish IPTS with some government backed institution, and MEnara IGB sits across TNB headquarters, where over 10 years it has grown to a fantastic self-contained commercial city generating revenue and with a high multi-storey building housing the IGB hq.

3.       The Malays would be hard-pressed to replicate this, but again, the question is, what is the inherent strength of the Chinese? I would hazard that it’s the community’s ability to stand on the shoulders of giants, to cooperate and to consolidate.