The Millionaire Club-Are you In or Out?

Sad stories not only affect the poor. They also puncture the ego of the rich. And so as it goes, the global recession has also trimmed down the inclusive numbers in the Millionaire Club.

A Straits Times report circa Oct 14 unequivocally tells the story.

"The Asia-Pacific millionaires club has taken a hit in the face of the global economic downturn.

The number of high net worth individuals (HNWIs) in countries such as Japan, China and Australia — those who hold at least US$1 million (RM3.39 million) in investable assets — shrank by 14.2 per cent to 2.4 million last year, according to the Asia-Pacific Wealth Report released by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini yesterday.

Their wealth shrank 22.3 per cent to US$7.4 trillion.

As for the super-rich, the financial crisis dealt an even larger blow to their wealth. The report said that the ultra-high net worth individuals, with investable assets of at least US$30 million, saw their wealth shrink 35.1 per cent.

Those belonging to this well-heeled group in Asia-Pacific numbered 14,300 — a fall of 29.6 per cent. Japan, China and Australia are home to about three-quarters of Asia-Pacific’s high net worth individuals.

Japan has the biggest number of these individuals, with 1.37 million HNWIs, followed by China with 364,000.

The publication reports that wealthy Asians have staged a flight to safety in the face of economic uncertainty, allocating their wealth to ‘safer’ cash-based investments and demonstrating a lower appetite for riskier asset classes.

They have also favoured more familiar territories, choosing to invest in home regional markets instead of markets in Europe or North America.

Arvind Sundaresan, head of sales for Asia-Pacific at Capgemini’s financial services global business unit, said: “As markets recover and risk appetite returns, we expect Asian-Pacific (high net worth individuals) to adopt a more balanced investment approach and gradually increase their allocations to other regions.”

The report predicts that growth in Asia-Pacific’s wealth will pick up as market conditions improve. The region’s economies have shown signs of recovery and are forecast to grow at more than twice the pace of the global economy next year, it states.

The combined wealth of Asia-Pacific’s millionaires is estimated to grow at an annual rate of 8.8 per cent until 2018, faster than the global average of 7.1 per cent, the report said.

This increase will be led by China and India and will be fueled by their robust domestic consumption and growing number of affluent individuals.

In Singapore, the combined wealth of its millionaires shrank 29.4 per cent to US$272 billion during the year — the third-largest erosion of wealth in the region after Hong Kong and Australia.

In Singapore, cash-like assets rose 11 per cent to 33 per cent last year as investors headed to safer ground after regional stock markets plummeted.

Almost a quarter of the financial assets of local HNWIs were found to be in real estate last year.

However, a 5 per cent decline in the value of assets allocated to real estate is forecast by next year as market uncertainty causes investors to remain on the sidelines.

Despite the local stock market rallying almost 50 per cent since the beginning of this year, head of Singapore and Malaysia research at Merrill Lynch, Melvyn Boey, said that wealth generation through the stock market had a way to go before it reached its peak.

“With the assumption that portfolio wealth remains the same across asset classes, it is a reasonable assumption that the wealth of high net worth individuals is not back at levels we saw at the peak prior to the financial crisis,” he said.

Boey added that a recovery of 100 per cent was required before the local stock market returned to the position it occupied prior to the economic downturn.

He has seen a return to asset classes such as equity and fixed income and a decrease in the popularity of cash-based assets although investors still remain cautious.

Merrill Lynch anticipates 6.5 per cent real GDP growth for Singapore next year, citing positive investor sentiment and continued capital inflows".

Scarlett Has Come of Age

Scarlett Johanssen as you have never seen before. Coy and fabulous.



I never knew she got married to Ryan Reynolds as she has been romantically linked to both Josh Harnett and Benecio Del Toro.

Asiapacific to Outpace the World

A Bernama Report today (13 October)opines that the Asia Pacific will likely experience a faster economic recovery than the global economy in 2010; with gross domestic product (GDP) growth speculated to expand by 3.5 per cent versus the forecasted 1.6 per cent growth for the world.

For this year, the region’s GDP was expected to contract by 0.9 per cent, less than the 2.7 per cent contraction forecast for the world, said the Asia Pacific Wealth Report released by Merril Lynch Global Wealth Management and Capgemini.

The report said there were signs that the region was emerging relatively quickly from the global slump and will ultimately suffer less severe detrimental effects from the crisis than other regions of the world.

Stronger-than-average growth in emerging Asia, notably China and India, the report said was likely to lessen the effect of global economic crisis in the region this year and significantly contribute to its overall growth next year.

“The 2008-2009 government policy response of both China and India, particularly fiscal stimulus, is expected to lend significant support to those economies in 2009-10.

“However, growth in India could be undermined by drought,” it said.

Below-normal monsoon rains this year have pushed around 40 per cent of the country’s districts into drought-like conditions, which are likely to affect farm output and trigger a sharp rise in food prices.

The report stated that the overall business outlook for the region also remained promising. The business environment in China and India were likely to improve significantly during the period of 2009-13.

For example, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Business Environment Ranking, China ranked 11 places higher for the 2009-13 forecast period than it did for 2004-08.

Unemployment in the region was also expected to be lower than the global average. The report explained that efforts to increase employment were under way across the region, helping to underpin its independent economic recovery.

“Domestic-demand growth in Asia Pacific region is likely to outpace the average domestic-demand growth in the world consistently during the period of 2009-2013, and would help in faster economic recovery of the region,” the report said.

It said this demand was likely to be experienced by China and India, forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 9.7 per cent and 7.9 per cent respectively during the same period.

Moving forward, the region could further focus on domestic-demand growth by building stronger social protection systems and reducing the pressure on individuals to save for their health, education and retirement needs.

Such efforts, the report added would help to increase consumer confidence and stimulate private consumption and enable domestic currencies to appreciate.

Will Asiapacific economies live up to this expectation? Let the next quarter of 2009 tell the story.

Another Landmark Disappears!

The destruction of the notorious landmark called Pudu Jail started today. After the prison moved to its new locale at Sungai Buluh, there were plans to make Pudu Jail into a museum of sorts of well as a kind of tourist attraction. All these grand plans are gone with the wind.

October 13,2009,bulldozers came into the old Pudu Jail and began on the demolition of part of Pudu Jail, to make way for a road expansion and tunnel project. The new tunnel road will allow motorists to bypass the crossroads next to the old prison, now closed for several years.

“We started demolishing the prison last Thursday. We will be building a tunnel that will end just before the traffic lights turning into Puduraya,” said a City Hall (DBKL) spokesman.

The project costing some RM83 million is earmarked for completion by September 2011.


As to the owner of the Pudu Jail land,apparently it belonged to UDA Holdings Sdn Bhd had which bought over the land from the government. The are planning on building a shopping mall on the location, something similar to the adjacent Berjaya Times Square.

Pudu Jail was built in 1895 by state engineer Charles Edwin Spooner as a prison to house criminals, including drug offenders.

The estimated cost of the prison at the time was RM327,627.

After operating for more than 90 years, it was closed following the 1986 execution of Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers, both Australian nationals. They were convicted for trafficking in heroin and were sentenced to death.

It was reopened in 1997-1998 as a museum and briefly in 2004.

Butchart Garden- Paradise of the Heavens

A veritable Garden of Eden, that is the Butchart Garden,Victoria,Vancouver for you.

A dash of red, a splash of purple and a crown of yellow. It is a mishmash of the earth's greens and flowers at its best, a showcase of the wondrous beauty that is nature.

If you are ever in Vancouver, never miss the Butchart Gardens- the nearest thing to the Garden of Eden on earth!

The Invisible Man

Liu Bolin is an interesting painter.


Look at these few photos.

He paints himself.He is a camouflage painter.


In China, he is dubbed the "Invisible Man".




See how he blends himself, chameleon-like into the background?

The Passenger War Begins!

The war for the year-end-Chinese New Year season traveler's buck has begun. The Straits Times has this to report today (13 October 2009).

Hit hard by budget carriers flying their route, express coach companies are starting to fight back.

Case in point:

One company, Transtar Travel, is planning a promotion with half-price tickets to Kuala Lumpur. It will offer $9 (RM21.60) one-way tickets to the first 9,900 customers traveling between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur on its new express coach service.

The offer can be booked at the three-day Travel Malaysia fair starting on Friday at Suntec Convention Centre, where seven bus companies will have booths. These promotional seats are normally priced at $17 and offer the usual perks of reclining seats, shared entertainment screens and a food and beverage bar. One-way express bus tickets range from about $20 to more than $60, depending on how luxurious the coach is.

A Transtar spokesman reiterated that business has been down by about 30 per cent since caps were lifted last December on how many flights budget carriers could make on the route.

Every year, more than 1.5 million people hop on express coaches and head for Kuala Lumpur. Since the opening up of skies between Singapore and Malaysia, however, bus companies are reporting a drop of about 30 per cent to 40 per cent of passenger traffic.

The Singapore-Kuala Lumpur sector is now served by 11 airlines and is the busiest out of Changi Airport, with 498 flights both ways a week.

Flights take about 45 minutes, but passengers need to check in and make a trip to and from the airport, bringing the total time to five hours, similar to traveling by bus.

“We cannot just sit around and hope that we won’t get hurt. We have to come up with ways to bring people back to the buses,” he said.

"Transtar, with a fleet of 50 coaches running the Singapore-Kuala Lumpur sector 12 times a day, is one of the bigger players in the market, so the likelihood is that other companies will follow suit with lower fares soon," he added.

The company's low-fare deal is a promotional offer for a new class of coach service called Transtar Classic. This line will be scaled down from his high-end coach services, which come with 18 reclining seats that double as massage chairs, individual entertainment screens and food from Delifrance. Transtar Classic will have 61 seats and run non-stop to Kuala Lumpur three times a day.

Other bus firms are not sure that competing on price alone is the best strategy.

Hasry Singapore, a competitor, said lower fares would attract more people, but sustainability would be an issue. He is considering raising the level of service and convenience instead, like having Internet connection on the bus.

For construction firm owner Brandon Lim, who takes the bus regularly to Malaysia, the perks mean little. “Planes don’t get me door-to-door, and I have to spend extra time and money on getting to and from the airport. Bus is always better,” he said.

I think he's got a point there!