Commentary

The institutional investment world is waking up to the reality of the Global Financial Crisis (or GFC) which drags on interminably. We look to our newspapers on a daily basis to see if some quick fix or short term panacea for Europe’s travails has been miraculously discovered, or whether the US economy has rediscovered its mojo. The reality is that the problems in the Western World of huge fiscal deficits and ballooning public debt will persist for the rest of the financial careers of most readers. But, while Europe and North America languish, all is not lost. Institutions are now waking up to the fact that with 50% of global GDP now coming from the developing world, there is a real imperative to shift more of their investment portfolios towards these markets. Goldman Sachs estimates that this could represent as much as 4 trillion US dollars over the next two decades. Hello Singapore! With a private banking business said to oversee over 300 billion dollars of wealth, situated slap bang in the middle of one of the most populous and fast growing regions in the world, one would have thought that the choice of funds investing into ASEAN story would be too many to list here. Instead, there are scarcely a handful of managers that run equity funds dedicated to the wider region, and those that do, whether within the big banks, or small boutique fund managers, remain small and largely unheard of, in an industry dominated by Global Emerging Markets managers. China is only 5 hours away from Singapore, and its stock markets have not been a very fertile place to invest in recent years. However, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, scarcely a short hop from the Lion City, have been the darlings of the global investor. Time to raise the flag here in the region’s principal capital market, and build a financial centre for ASEAN fund management. Step forward champions of ASEAN.

Having up to six months of potential bonuses accrued is not stopping candidates from searching for a new job that can deliver more than financial gain, such as career development and progression. That’s one finding from the recently released Hays Quarterly Report, for the July to September 2012 quarter, which points to an active candidate market in Singapore.

The Mentos “National Night” campaign was no doubt creative, and viral, but did it drive any real outcomes? How will we “ahem” measure this? 9 Months later? Brand visibility is up but is anything else? Did you feel compelled to buy a roll of Mentos? (because you were happy to see me). Love the creativity, but the mechanism to translate this into sustained engagement was the anti-climax. If the campaign had added the mechanics so that social media could extend into lasting engagement and loyalty it could and would have been a truly legendary campaign. So what’s holding marketers, brand owners and businesses from doing this? The ability to take creative content and build in long-term engagement has never been more opportune, and measurable. For example, the vast majority of our consumer audience now carries a mobile phone which is more powerful than the PC was on our desk ten years ago, and which can be used in a variety of ways to engage, reward, and build sustainable relationships. Look at what Pacific Beverages and the Stella Artois brand they manage is doing with their “How Does Yours Measure Up?” campaign (and yes, pun intended). As they execute this creative and fun campaign, in search of the best draught beer and bar in Singapore, it also engages the consumer with a mobile platform to reward them for their purchases, and in turn gain their feedback. This builds on the creative concept but also incents consumers to purchase Stella Artois in comparison to other brands as well as drive other key business and ROI outcomes. It’s a two-way engagement that has lasting, and real impact. And honestly - isn't that better than a one-night stand? 

No matter which business industry you are in, one of your main concerns is having a competitor that undercharge your rates - worse when the same competitor churns out much inferior quality work which goes unnoticed.

Current biggest business challenges include intense competition and low margins (due to an open economy and liberal trading environment), inflationary costs (due to rental expenses and tightening labour market caused by reduced foreign workers) as well as increasing uncertain external demand for Singapore exports from Europe and USA.

Let me ask you 3 questions. Please be truthful with your answers because I won’t be there to hear them.

If you, and virtually everyone you know, is on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest or other social media sites I bet at some point or other you may have toyed with the idea of getting rid of your ‘old-fashioned’, non-social media website right and focusing all your time and energy on one or more of these sites. You might try and convince yourself by saying ‘I spend 90% of my time on Facebook these days and almost none updating my own website. So closing it down makes sense, right? Wrong! “Although it may seem counter-intuitive, if you’re in business the more time you spend using social media sites to connect and engage with clients and others the more important it is to have an up-to-date, easy to navigate dot-sg or dot-com type website of your own to support your social media activities” says reputation expert and author Hannah Samuel.

This is a question that most leaders ponder over, and in the search for the perfect answer to what that ultimate leadership approach and style might look like, many probably realise that this is not as easy as they had imagined.

A very experienced editor of a weekly news magazine once told me over dinner, "You can't make writers. They either have a knack for it or they don't but you can improve the good ones."

There’s a little bit of an oddball crowd out there in Singapore—the type that considers moving to Johor Bahru.

“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever,” so says a famous Chinese proverb.

When American parents drop off their children at primary school, the parting words are usually “have fun” rather than “work hard”, and until the internet boom created teenage millionaires out of non-athletic nerds. The most admired students in high schools are the football captains and cheerleaders. When a high school senior chooses which colleges to apply to, he/she often asks about the party scene rather than academic standards. The Ivy League colleges would admit sportsmen, movie starlets and children of politicians with mediocre transcripts and SAT scores, in order to add “diversity” to its student population. One President of Yale University, Bart Giamatti, resigned to become the US Baseball Commissioner.

A major challenge to international arbitration is the perception by corporate and in-house counsel that this process has grown to be time-consuming and costly. A recent survey by the Corporate Counsel International Arbitration Group (“CCIAG survey”) found overwhelming agreement with 100% of the respondents agreeing that it took too long (56% of respondents strongly agree) and cost too much (69% of respondents strongly agree).

Fundamentally the business of business is simple!

No doubt having a job pays the bills and if it is well-paid, buys that dream condo, car and holidays abroad. You may compete with a better MBA or show off relevant work experience, but in your chase for a better paid job, have you taken everything into consideration? Can you stomach the politics of the new organisation where bosses play ’stab the other person to get ahead’ games which includes lower ranking staff like you, or war with other departments, staking out turfs in open plan offices, all affecting your daily well-being? Do you just love the creative aspects of your job but hate the selling and negotiating bits that came with the higher salary and abusive clients? Are you a whizz at dreaming up complex ‘what if‘ scenarios but hopeless at solving day to day problems which somehow makes up most of your current strategic planning job? Does selling banking or insurance products to old aunties make you wince, knowing that a nice chunk of it goes to line your annual bonus? Do you wish you are out there helping to make a better world for others who need help instead of trying to meet monthly profit forecasts for your publicly listed company? Or did you simply sign up with a media company, find yourself a supervisor in production and now dread going to work but don’t know why? People in wrong jobs throw in the towel No matter if you have just joined the workforce, has worked for several years, or experiencing mid career crisis, or on your way to a silver handshake, people in ‘wrong’ jobs eventually throw in the towel. How long before is just a matter of tolerance thresholds? As a career counselor who spent the last 20 years talking to job seekers and corporate executives from a wide variety of backgrounds and job types, I find that an inherent satisfaction and happiness with the work one does and one’s work environment determines how long a person stays in a job. Much more than whether the job will pay more. Doing work you like matters a lot I think of the 35+ chartered accountant who left his father’s firm as he could no more face the drudgery of monthly P & L statements; the young graduate who left a prestigious international bank much to the chagrin of her cohort who envied her job because she could bear to make the nice old aunties lose money (she also missed out on the Lehman’s debacle); the 50’s CEO who left a 25 year career in the middle of a recession because his heart was in teaching and writing: or the hardened 62 year old expat oil trader trading up a huge top dog salary only after two years, to be a nature tour guide because “each day, you walk through the door, lying through your teeth and you leave lying through your teeth.” One of the most poignant instances happened during a work-life training session of 25 male engineers in a high stress 24/7 environment when one admitted that he leaves his daily ‘easygoing attitude’ at work, taking out the day’s stress on his wife and son through violent outbursts. Like athletes training for the elusive gold, your eight hour or longer workday should fulfill and balance your relationships with the world around you in a way money cannot. Is this work you would happily do, day in, day out, making additional sacrifices willingly when called for? If some aspects of a job fill you with dread, it’s time to think again. Such tasks have a way of becoming the be-all of a particular job. The key question about right fit is: ‘Would you look forward to going to work each day?’

Singapore as a transport hub will benefit hugely from a massive change in the Asian supply chain. It is going to be more ‘compact’. Goods will increasingly be transported inside Asia and to a nearer customer rather than long distance/globally.