Penny Stock John Soh Chee Wen

The mastermind of a scheme that led to the largest and most serious case of market manipulation in Singapore, which wiped out S$8 billion from the Singapore stock market in 2013, was sentenced on Wednesday (Dec 28).

John Soh Chee Wen, a prominent Malaysian businessman, was handed 36 years' jail. His ex-partner and accomplice Quah Su-Ling, former CEO of Singapore Exchange(SGX)-listed IPCO International, was given 20 years' jail. Soh and Quah had been convicted of 180 and 169 charges respectively after a long-running trial spanning almost 200 days and involving close to 100 prosecution witnesses.

From August 2012 to October 2013, Quah and Soh artificially inflated the share prices of three penny stocks: Blumont, Asiasons and LionGold. They controlled, obtained financing for, conducted illegitimate trading activity in and coordinated their use of 189 securities trading accounts. These accounts were held with 20 financial institutions in the names of 60 individuals and companies.

The bulk of their charges - 106 counts of deception - were for deceiving financial institutions by concealing their involvement when giving instructions to make orders and trades. Soh was additionally found guilty of witness tampering by asking four witnesses to lie to investigators after the stock market crash.

The scheme unravelled on Oct 4, 2013 when the share prices of the three companies crashed, erasing S$8 billion in market capitalisation from SGX.

The prosecution had sought 40 years' jail for Soh, and 19-and-a-half years for Quah, who was less culpable. A third co-accused, 59-year-old Goh Hin Calm, was sentenced to 3 years' jail in 2019 after pleading guilty to two charges of false trading and market rigging.

Bellagraph Nova Group Crashed

A Singaporean businessman who made the news in August 2020 - attempting to buy English Premier League football club Newcastle United but left Singapore weeks later amid allegations of accounting irregularities has been caught in China. Entrepreneur Nelson Loh Ne-Loon, a director of Novena Global Healthcare Group, was sent back to Singapore on Saturday (Dec 24), along with an employee of the company. Loh and and his employee Wong Soon Yuh, both 43, were arrested on the same day. They were charged in court on Monday with two counts of forgery, the police said in a statement.    

Loh also headed the Bellagraph Nova Group along with his cousin Terence Loh and their Chinese business partner, Evangeline Shen. The company had attempted to buy English Premier League club Newcastle United in August 2020 for £280 million (S$490 million at that time) but reports about manipulated photos used in its marketing materials started to emerge.  

Prior to that, not much was known about Bellagraph Nova Group, though it claimed then it had 31 business "entities" worldwide, with a group revenue of US$12 billion (S$16.43 billion) in 2019 and 23,000 employees. 

Nelson Loh was declared a bankrupt in early 2021, according to reports.

Forged Audited Financial Statements - The police said on Monday that Loh and Wong, a Singaporean who worked closely with him, had allegedly forged audited financial statements of NGHG in 2019, and used those statements to obtain bank loans amounting to S$18 million.

It was previously reported that Novena Global Healthcare and Novena Life Sciences had failed to file annual returns due on July 29, 2018 and Dec 9, 2019 respectively.

Days after the pair left Singapore in early September 2020, the police received a report that signatures of accounting firm Ernst & Young had allegedly been forged on some of NHGH’s financial statements.

Warrants of arrest and Interpol Red Notices — request to law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person, pending extradition, surrender or similar legal action — were subsequently issued against them. The two men were then detained by the Chinese authorities and returned to Singapore on Dec 24, where they were arrested by the Commercial Affairs Department,

Cancer Updates 2022 - Malaysia

More than 20,000 new cancer patients, with an average age of over 40 years, are detected in Malaysia every year. There were currently about 100,000 cancer survivors in the country who were living with various types of cancer.

NCSM is planning to implement the 'One District, One Screening' program in all states next year to encourage and facilitate the people in the country to do health screening, especially to detect cancer. It is aimed at detecting cancer at an early stage so that immediate treatment could be carried out, thus preventing cancer cells from spreading and saving lives.

Over the past two years, there were more new cancer patients aged between their late 20s and early 30s. The age of individuals diagnosed with cancer is now younger and the number of children with cancer is also high.

For men, there are 10 types of cancer that often affect them and the highest category recorded is bowel cancer, followed by lung, prostate, lymphoma, nasopharynx, liver, leukemia, stomach, skin and bladder. 

For women, the highest case involved breast cancer, followed by colorectal or bowel, cervix, lung, ovary, corpus uteri, lymphoma, thyroid, leukemia and skin.

However, he said, the number of cervical cancer patients had dropped in recent years, believed to be due to the administration of the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine for school students, especially among teenage girls as young as 13 years old. 

Singapore Insurance - A Gig That Does Not Fit

The General Insurance Association of Singapore's (GIA) alternative proposal for insuring gig workers is "not viable" because it would either lead to higher premiums for platform companies or lower work injury compensation for such workers, said Senior Minister of State for Manpower Koh Poh Koon.

“If it was so viable, why didn’t the insurance and platform companies suggest this earlier when there were workers who were injured or suffered death while on the job?” said Dr Koh. 

He was responding to a supplementary question by Mr Liang Eng Hwa, Member of Parliament for Bukit Panjang Single Member Constituency on the Government's response to the proposal by GIA, which represents some 40 insurance firms here.

Dr Koh’s comments come a week after the Government accepted several recommendations by the advisory committee on platform workers. These requirements will apply to platform companies, such as food-delivery and ride-hail firms. Taxi companies working on a street-hail model, however, will be exempt.

These recommendations include requiring platform companies to provide the same scope and level of compensation as employees’ under the existing Work Injury Compensation Act (Wica).

For example, if a gig worker works for three food delivery companies and is injured while completing a delivery, the company with whom the worker was doing that delivery for, will have to pay for the worker's total income loss across all three firms.

General Insurance Association - In a statement after the recommendations were announced, GIA chief executive Ho Kai Weng propsed an alternative which he said can be efficiently achieved through existing solutions. Instead of Wica, he suggested platform workers be given prolonged medical leave insurance and group personal accident insurance. 

If platform workers were to tap on their Medishield Life as well, the proposal — taken in its entirety — will ensure workers are protected for medical expenses, medical leave wages, permanent incapacity and death, said Mr Ho. 

Dr Koh pointed out that given that employees are covered for up to S$45,000 medical expenses for work injuries, there is no reason for platform workers to have to rely on Medishield Life, which is paid for using their Central Provident Fund monies or out-of-pocket cash.

The advisory committee’s position is that platform workers should receive the same level of coverage for work injury compensation as employees, he said. 

Self Insured In Disguise - “GIA’s suggestion is essentially asking platform workers to pay for their own medical expenses,” Dr Koh said. He added that GIA’s insurace coverage proposal for gig workers will lead to higher insurance premiums for platform companies given that the scope of coverage for their proposed policy is "much wider on a 24/7 basis". 

This would raise the business cost for companies, especially since they would have to purchase insurance coverage even for workers who do only an hour of work a day, he said. 

Dr Koh said that GIA’s proposal was contrary to what insurers had advised the advisory committee before the recommendations were published. 

“I will suggest that GIA members work closely with platform companies to offer financial protection and compensation for these workers at the level of Wica as soon as possible by the first quarter of next year," he said.

Zoom To Doom

Shares of Zoom Video Communications Inc have tumbled about 90% from their pandemic peak in October 2020 as the former investor darling struggles to adjust to a post-COVID world. The stock was down nearly 10% on Tuesday after the company cut its annual sales forecast and posted its slowest quarterly growth, prompting at least six brokerages to cut their price targets.

The company, which became a household name during lockdowns due to the popularity of its video-conferencing tools, is trying to reinvent itself by focusing on businesses, with products such as cloud-calling service Zoom Phone and conference-hosting offering Zoom Rooms.

Any turnaround in the business is still a few quarters away as growth in its mainstay online unit slows and competition from Microsoft Corp’s Teams and Cisco’s Webex and Salesforce’s Slack gets intense.

Zoom needed to spend heavily to keep hold of market share. Spending to cling onto, rather than grow, market share is never a good place to be and was a sign of trouble ahead. The company’s operating expenses surged 56% in the third quarter as it spent more on product development and marketing. Its adjusted operating margin shrank to 34.6% from 39.1% a year earlier.

Covid 19 - Opportunity Or Curse For Courrier Company

Nationwide Express Courier Services Bhd is set to become the latest last-mile delivery company to cease operations amid a challenging and competitive operating environment in Malaysia. The company said in a statement that it is currently taking steps to gradually cease its business operations, after a winding-up petition was filed against it. The company said it is ceasing its business operations effective Dec 15.

Nationwide Express, founded by the late businessman Tan Sri Basir Ismail, was one of the country’s leading courier service providers. Its roots can be traced back to 1985. 

Nationwide Express has 1,100 dedicated employees, a fleet of more than 300 vehicles, and 500 motorbike couriers. It has a network of 150 branches and agents in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, with the capacity to handle over 40,000 packages per day.

KTM Distribution Sdn Bhd - last month, KTM Distribution terminated its operations effective Nov 1, despite having a 38-year presence in the courier and logistics business. KTM Distribution said that the cessation of its operations was in line with a restructuring exercise.

CJ Century Logistic Holdings Bhd - another company that has exited the last-mile delivery industry is CJ Century Logistics Holdings Bhd, formerly known as Century Logistics, which sold its loss-making courier arm last year for about RM7.5 million.

Other players - such as GDEX Bhd and Pos Malaysia Bhd have suffered consecutive quarters of losses, despite on-steroid growth in demand for courier or last-mile delivery services in the past three years — fuelled by the Covid-19 pandemic — with many e-commerce platforms outsourcing their services to delivery companies.

The last-mile delivery sector is facing an extremely competitive operating environment in Malaysia. The country, with a population of 33 million, has granted 122 courier licences. In comparison, Thailand, with a population of 70 million, has granted only half as many courier licences as Malaysia, while Indonesia has 42 for a nation of 273 million.

Managing Group Project Effectively

When it comes to setting project goals, it is essential to keep the following in mind:

• Clear Objectives
• Team Buy-in
• Expectations
• Responsibility
• Tracking
• Positivity

Clear Objectives - Objectives should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (SMART). This ensures that everyone is on the same page from the get-go when the team sets out to achieve a goal.

Team Buy-in - It isn’t easy to accomplish anything without buy-in from the team. If team members do not feel invested in a project or goal, achieving success won’t be easy. One way to ensure buy-in is to give employees a voice in decision-making. This could be done through something as simple as a brainstorming session or voting on project objectives.

Expectations - Setting expectations early on will help avoid misunderstandings and frustration down the road. It will also prevent employees or teams from working on projects or tasks that don’t align with the agreed-upon expectations. If expectations are not met, it can lead to conflict within the group. Set realistic expectations and communicate them clearly to avoid this situation.

Responsibility - Assigning responsibility for specific tasks or objectives is important to ensure everyone knows what is expected of them. (We’re looking at you, seat-of-your-pants employee!) In addition, responsibility will help keep the project organized and on track.

Tracking - Tracking progress is essential to ensure the team is heading toward the final goal. This could be done through something as simple as a status update or a daily stand-up meeting. Alongside check-in meetings, you should also track within a project management tool that allows for transparency and collaboration. For example, you can keep track of tasks, deadlines, and assigned roles within each project using Hive, a project management platform. Online project manageent platform provide project clarity and eliminate the need for micromanagement.

Positivity - Last but not least, it is important to maintain a positive attitude throughout the project. This can be difficult when things get tough or challenging, but it is essential to remember that every goal is attainable with hard work and dedication.

Following these six tips, you will be well on your way to set realistic and achievable project goals for whatever is next on your list. With these tips, you can build out a specific project roadmap to success. Then, you will naturally remove the seat of your pants, employee, or team by giving them clear expectations, responsibilities, tasks, and project buy-in.