EPF: Quarterly Investment Holdings Display

Beginning today, EPF will be showing its op 30 equity investments in companies listed on Bursa Malaysia on a quarterly basis.

This action is in conformance with its corporate governance stance, where members could see in which companies their savings were invested.

“Besides, by periodically disclosing its investment performance, it will help to reassure members that investment decisions undertaken are in the best interest of growing their retirement savings and in accordance with best practices in investment and governance,” says EPF.

This is a first step towards enhancing EPF’s transparency and it would review periodically if there was any further information on its investment that could be disclosed without jeopardising its investment strategy.

However,  “not everything regarding EPF’s investments could be revealed”.

The investment highlights can be viewed at
 
www.kwsp.gov.my.

The website includes media releases on quarterly financial performance, a compilation of annual reports, advertorials on annual reports and dividend rates.

As of March 31, the EPF’s top three shareholdings were 67.33% stake in Malaysian Building Society Bhd, 56.14% of RHB Capital Bhd and 41.54% of Malaysian Resources Corp Bhd.

The Berjaya Corp Sting

Was it a sting and Vincent Tan made a bundle from his Bursa pronouncement ?

We may never know.

One thing is for sure, many people chased the shares subsequent to the pronouncement of Berjaya Corp buying 70% of Ascot Sports which purportedly was re-issued a sports betting license.

The share price went beyond RM1.80 sen.

Today, with all the finger pointing and mystery surrounding the status of this pronouncement, the share is sliding down below RM1.40. Some analysts are predicting it will fall to the 90 sen mark when Sarawak became the first BN led state to ban the opening of sports betting centres there.

How sad!

Bursa Yusli's Tall Tales

Don’t blame others. Bursa committed seppaku when it introduced the RM40.00 irresponsible standard brokerage share in a market that hardly saw much retailing activity. In its bid to save the remisiers, it put on this condition.

However, the remisiers were undone by IT trading and most went back to square one.

Again by trading using a one sen price interval revision, the market became almost comatose. There was little to look forward too. Big players came in once a while to harvest arbitrage differences.

True, the mutual funds did mop up some of these retail payers but in the end, their investments came to naught in spite of such strongly worded terms like ‘capital protected’. It was misrepresentation through and through!

It’s no point bringing up statistics. Retailers were shut out of the market because of your silly RM40.00 brokerage. That should explain why the percentage of retail players slumped from 52% pre 1997 to only 20% these days. The current play is the work of local institutional players and when they get their funds at the beginning of a month, the get into the market marginally pushing up the index momentarily. The state-controlled Employees Provident Fund accounts for 50 per cent of daily trading. After that it will move from side to side like a disused sampan.

As for the index, this is not the same one as before. You have changed the goal posts all too often.

The slump in trading by individuals on the Bursa also coincided with an exodus by foreigners from Southeast Asia. Overseas investors have sold a net RM1.36 billion of Malaysia’s equities this year alone, adding to RM8.57 billion withdrawn in 2009 and RM38.6 billion ringgit that flowed out in 2008.

It's all your fault!

Drowning the Selangor Water Players

Now the time-lines are getting shorter. Debts would have to be paid.

Today the Malaysian Rating Corporation (MARC) got into the act as well. It put all the players involved in the Selangor  Water Sector under “ Negative Watch” as there seems to be no “development to the restructuring exercise”.

Hopefully, this dampener will wake up those players which are ‘reaching the end of the rope. With no more rope to hang onto any more, maybe they will give in to the  Splash offer to take over  all the disparate water concessionaires in Selangor  at RM10.75 billion. The State of Selngor’s earlier offer was RM9.2 billion.

Splash’s bid preseumably was backed by the Federal government after a revised offer in April which saw the participation of Pengurusan Aset Air Bhd (PAAB), in compliance with the asset-light condition spelled out under the Water Services Industry Act.

Under the deal offered by Splash, PAAB would pay RM8.1bil for the assets to be topped up with RM2.6bil from Splash.

What will be the negative effects of being put under ‘negative watch’?

For one, it definitely affects debt papers issued by Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor Sdn Bhd (Syabas), Puncak Niaga (M) Sdn Bhd, Puncak Niaga Holdings Bhd, RUN Holding SPV Bhd, Syarikat Pengeluar Air Sungai Selangor Sdn Bhd, Viable Chip (M) Sdn Bhd and Titisan Modal Sdn Bhd.

The concerns are real. The inability to restructure will result in Syabas’ continued inability to meet in full its monthly bulk water payment obligations to water-treatment operators as the result of the former’s unresolved water tariff hike.

Let us watch whether this MARC action will spur some players into action.


Also the Pahang-Selangor Water Transfer Project is on-going and should provoke players to look at the bigger picture of a win-win situation for all.

Meanwhile, you can start collecting shares like KPS,KHSB and JAKS at fairly low prices now!