Reading in the last few weeks.
1- Tortilla Wars
Interesting article by Noam Chomsky. Imagine, how oil can have an impact and ignited tortilla wars in Mexico? Tortilla is a staple food for Mexican, where it is made from corn flour. Simply said: Instability in Middle East :- uncertainty oil price that US ended up paying :- US increasing its biofuel production [corn based ethanol] as energy substitute :- increased demand of corn, driving supply from mexico to US :- creating short supply within Mexico, raising prices :- increased of more than 50% prices of tortilla in Mexico :- local mexican suffering !!
Mexican economist believe US-sponsored NAFTA back in 1994 with Mexico plays a significant role. The "free trade" regime drives Mexico from self-sufficiency in food toward dependency on US exports.
In March, Bush's trip to Latin America, made deal with Brazil on joint production of ethanol. But Bush, while promoting free trade emphasised forcefully that the high tariffs to protect US producers would remain, along with the many forms of government subsidy for the industry. Is this fair ??
2- "Real" Wars??
SCO's war games [Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, currently have 6 countries as members, with Iran has been invited as observer and several other countries waiting to join as member] vs US led Malabar war games. Both gave strong signal to each other. With Russia actively "networking" with other asian countries [the latest with Indonesia arm deals], China with many "strategically" central asian and africa countries [mostly driven by oil and other minerals], US is under-pressure to show its dominant [arming up middle east, India etc]. Even Uzbekistan, previously US ally, has now joined SCO, after Bush critised its president Islam Karimov for a violent crackdown on protestors. Several occasions now that Russia has re-established its cold war exercises, sending long range fighter to international airspace [recently, British fighters have been scrambled to escort Russian long range bombers]. Is this just a political gimmick, or something more?
3- The big players? consolidation?
Stock exchanges
LSE [London Stock Exchange] had 55% up in profits after resisted hostile takeover by US rival Nasdaq. LSE then agreed to take over Borsa Italiana [one effort to ensure LSE's independence rather than being taken over by other exchanges], while Borsa Italiana in itself is exercising its option to buy out stake in Euronext. LSE is now collaborating with Singapore Exchange [SGX] and LSE is planning to take a large stake in SGX in the next few months. Borse Dubai and Nasdaq are bidding for taking over Sweden Exchange owner, OMX. The Qatar Investment Authority, which is also preparing to buy J Sainsbury, the British supermarket chain, is joining forces with three major Italian investors to take Nasdaq’s stake in the LSE, worth around £1billion. Nasdaq is selling its shareholding in LSE [after fail in hostile takeover] to increase its offer for OMX to compete with Borse Dubai.
There are several other profitable stock markets being watched by the world major players. This is the beginning for consolidation of world stock markets.
Financial Data Vendor
Thomson financial, agreed £8.8bn acquisition of Reuters, creating effectively duopoly with Bloomberg. The merged company and Bloomberg eash has 24% of the financial data market. Standard & Poor's and Moody's have 13% and 10%, while Interactive Data is the closest rival to Thomson-Reuters and Bloomberg, with 3 %.
Rating agencies
Big three - standard & poor's, moody's and Fitch are under fire, recently by Michel Prada - head of the main french financial regulator, who is now trying to put the blame on regarding subprime issues. Of course someone has to pay for the services of these rating agencies and similarly, in investment banks, most research being done in house, That is why we have "Chinese Wall" policy.
4- Dubai
The ruler, realised when the oil was first found in 1966, the oil reserves will only last 30yrs or so, after the drilling started. They realised that the only way is to diversify the investment and revenue streams, using the oil money. In 1975, oil revenue made up 64% of Dubai's GDP. By 2010, the aim is for 25% economy from knowledge economy [everything from education , media to biotechnology] 70% from tourism and 5% from oil and gas.
Some projects in the pipeline including Dubai Internet City, Dubai Media City [also includes Dubai Studio City], Dubai Knowledge Village [1km long campus designed for mega universities and colleges etc], Dubiotech [Dubai Biotechnology and Research Park - a vast technology part for biotechnology, pharmaceutical and life sciences sectors - due to open early 2008], Dubai Health Care City [opening 2008], Dubai Festival City [1,600 acre project, opening 2010], Dubailand [aiming to be the main key to attract 15m tourists a year by 2010 - leisure city covering more than 100 square miles, twice the size of all Disneyland and DisneyWorld resorts put together - first phase opening in 2008, final phase between 2015-2018], and some other mega projects including series of artificial island projects.
Dubai now has [or will have] "the" of almost everything, from the tallest building, the largest man made island, the largest indoor ski slope, the largest airport [Dubai World Central International airport], to the biggest shopping mall, Dubai Mall.
UAE is reckoned currently to be home to almost a quarter of the world's 125,000 construction cranes, while some estimates that Dubai alone has 18% of the world total, more than 22,000 cranes.
On the other point, The World Economic Forum ranks the UAE as the most competitive economy in the arab world. When Dubai is isolated from the rest of UAE, it is even better, ranking ahead of Japan, Britain and Germany in terms of government efficiency and economic competitiveness.
5- China
China recently announced moves to allow Chinese investors to invest indirectly in foreign equities and derivative products. The annoucement itself enough to surge prices in Hong Kong listed stocks in the mainland. Why? Because, yuan deposits in China at the early May was $4.8 trillion. Fitch ratings estimates China held nearly $500bn in external assets last year, excluding forex reserves. At the same time, Chine is setting up an agency to invest part of its $1.2trn reserves in world markets.
This change is especially good news for global money managers that havent set up domestics operations in China, as they can now partner directly with Chinese banks to sell foreign equity products to chinese investors. Global fund houses will be long term winners from China's decision to let banks invest client money in overseas stocks, offering a new channel for the international fund managers to tap into more than $2trn in personal savings.
6- Technology:
Free software
To fight with Google Apps and OpenOffice, Microsoft will be launching free software, its ninth edition of Microsoft Works package end of this year. Of course, it will be ads supported and this will be a testing ground. Who knows, maybe later, more free Microsoft software will come, such as Microsoft Office?
Cyborg
Japanese invented mechanical suit [Hybrid Assisted Limb -HAL] that potential restores movement to stroke victims and paraplegics. It potentially be in the market as early as end of next year. Hope to those unable to walk.
7- Minerals
Seabed mining
The potentially largest seabed mining for metal [not oil] ever? Nautilus' project is progressing well off the coast of Papua New Guinea.
Glencore
one of the largest private mineral companies [incl oil, coal etc] in the world...and the most secretive of all.
yet, they have only basic info on their website [http://www.glencore.com/]. It was founded by former fugitive financier Marc Rich.
8-People
Warren Buffet
His parent company, Berkshire Hathaway [BK], has several setback lately. Sequoia Fund, has sold off their shares, reducing their stake in BK from 35% to 26%. Similarly Weitz Partners Value Funds, has reduced their holdings of BK shares. And significantly, Davis Financial Fund has exited from BK, reported selling $49m worth of BK A shares. But why these mutual fund managers, who are apparently have close relationship with Buffet, selling their stakes? Is it due to Buffet's age, 77? These selling of shares were despite Buffet has assured shareholders that a change in management [he is yet to name a successor] and a possible shift in control to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will have NO IMPACT on Berkshire's fortunes.
Most powerful Twin
For those didnt know, perhaps, Jaroslaw and Lech Kaczynski, is the most powerful twins, as the first is the prime minister of Poland while the later is the President.
9 - Right time
There are several heavy-weights who are now [or about to] mobilising their surplus funds to buy out many undervalued shares [ie to take advantage of the market chaos - buying when people are panickingly selling at cheap]. Below are examples:
- Alchemy Partners - has £300m stanby, which up to £100m could be spent up within the next few weeks. Currently working on 5 public-to-private deals.
- funds that making profits from sub-prime chaos [they hedged on the opposite direction], such as Paulson Credit Opp that made profit of about $800m, MKP Capital, Brigadier Capital, Pursuit Opp, Highland Capital, etc.
- even Berkshire Hathway [ie Warren Buffet] who is ready with $50bn cash, is waiting for the right time - when share and bond prices dropped due to panic investors and private equity executives are desperate to close multi-billion deals. Buffet has done similar thing during dot-com crashed. City analysts and fund managers, who have available cash, are likely to follow Buffet's next moves.
10- Statistics
- Foreign investors now own 40% [worth £742bn] of the shares listed on the London market. [36% at the end of 2004]. The biggest are held by North American investors [about 33% of all foreign-owned]
- British private investors only owned 13% [14% in 2004]
- Insurance companies account for 15% of the London market [17% in 2004]
- Pension funds only 13% [165 in 2004]
- hedge fund 10% [3% in 2000]
- the rest, owned by others
amongst the best performing markets:
- commodities [mineral - mainly diamond] in Botswana [index returns for the last 12 mths - 109%]. To take advantage of the soaring price of Diamond, The Diamond Circle Capital, is expected to float in LSE as early as Nov 2007.
- Riga [Latvia] experienced property appreciation of 61.91% in the first quater of 2007 [however, recent data by Latio shows that prices have started to fall in Q2 2007]
- XXI Century Investments fund - made total returns of 108.3% over the past 12 mths - the funds invested in properties, mainly in ukraine. Another excellent property fund is Dolphin Capital Investors [returns of 76.1% over the last 12mths] -mainly investing in Greece, Turkey and Croatia
Zifri
14 Sept
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Reading points - August
Just to share some of my recent reading points below. Might be an interesting read to some.
Oil Money
- "the silent" norway, is about to get approval later this year by the finance minister, to spend as much as GBP 20 bn on global property assets, being the europe's largest pension fund. This fund's size fuelled by revenues from oil reserves, has a total of Euro 220 bn, but previously been banned from investing in real estate. Norway was said to be the third largest oil exporter in the world. Two months ago, the fund hired a former investment banker from Merrill Lynch in anticipation of this change. He has since contacted many of his close friends in London, to seek investment opportunities in the UK and europe [and potentially outside Europe as well]. If you have a sound investment proposal, why not approach him...
- Similar situation with China, where several "government-related entities" are seeking to spread their wings globally and actively [due to piling up of huge reserve/export money], trailing Dubai/UAE and Qatar.
Traders
One of the highly paid job in the investment banking/hedge fund is a trader. However, with the advancement of quant algorithmic, many traders are becoming execution-only while the decisions are made by the computer. This is particularly true for several hedge fund industries where, all decisions are driven by a computer [not all strategies are computer driven though]. The top performing hedge fund sector - managed futures [see index by CS-Tremont] is mostly by computer. The same applies for global macro. This is one of the reason why the rich are getting even richer easily...you have to be a millionaire to invest in any of these double digit net return...
Sub-prime
- ever wonder why US sub-prime market issues not impacting so much in non sophisticated market? Well, the ripple is flowing to the market like London mainly due to derivative and hedge fund sectors. Billions of US sub prime debt for years have been bundled up [usually by investment banks], as CDO [collaterised debt obligations] and sold to banks, pension funds, hedge funds etc. The results [not complete list]; Bear Stearns recently suffered when three of its hedge funds losing the bulk of their value. Two weeks ago, Absolute Capital [Australian based], which invests in CDOs, temporarily suspended redemption for two of its funds. Basis Capital [another Australian], was "bailed" by Blackstone [private equity giant]. End of July, Citadel [which run by a billionnaire] has taken over credit portfolio of Sowood Capital, which was almost collapsed at that time. Later, it wound itself down. Macquarie suffered huge loss of its two funds, IKB Deutsche forced government to assume financial obligation worth Eur8bn.
This is turns, affected the ability to raise more finance for M&A, which for example, Blackstone struggles to raise debt for taking over Hilton, Cadbury extended the deadline for sale of its US arm, banks forced to postpone syndication of debt for Cerberus buyout and several more emerging.
Anyway, most bankers see this not as market meltdown but just a market corrections [since market has been overheating for a couple of years], ie the markets need to suffer 10% decline for the "correction" to apply.
I guess this condition will make it even more easier for new players [UAE-Dubai/Qatar/China/Norway - which are not affected so much of this sub-prime issues] to snap up the markets/expanding their portfolio.
Wealth
- US continues to be home to the largest number of the world's millinaires (2.7m) and the largest amount of HNWO [high net worth individuals - people with net assets >US$1m, excl primary residence and consumables. Europe the second, with UK leading the region. Amongst muslim countries, the highest growth of HNWI are Iran, Saudi Arabia and UAE [listed here alphabetically]. Interestingly, philanthropy is of very importance service particularly to ultra-HNWI [>US$30m]. In addition to high profile donation by Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Sir Tom Hunter, etc, private banking sectors are rushing to expand their services to include philanthropy. Several hedge funds/asset managements have followed suit by having their own unit fund [rather than the investors donating directly into any known charities], as to the wealthiest city bankers, charity sector is not an efficient market and lack transparency on prices and data... [ranking above by Wealth Management & Private Banking Review - 2007/08 ]
In other words, to tap on these funds, the said charity must be professionally managed, think like a company and to network with the right people.
UK statistics
there are around 30m people in employment
-the top 10% [3m people] earn on average £105k pa before tax [although half of them have a gross income of less than £58k]
-the top 1% [300,000 people], the rich, earn on average £253k.
-the top 0.1% [30,000 people], super rich, earn more than £500k, with average income of £1.1m
- The £33bn combined income of the super rich makes up nearly 4% of all personal income in Britain, compared to 6% in the US and 2% in France.
-Almost two thirds of the top 0.1% are working in financial services
-340,000 people working in the financial services in the City, earn an average of more than £100k
-7 of top ten in the 2007 Sunday Times rich list were borned outside Britain.
Source: business magazine. august 07 edition, written by one economic consultant
World Class Tourism destination
With Dubai leads the way, many other countries nearby are following suit. The latest craze is Saudi Arabia, with its plan to develop Al-Uqair Coastal area as the premier world class tourism destination. Adverts have appeared in several business dailies/journals in the west last week, inviting interested parties to become Qualified Applicants to compete for the title of Master Developer. Deadline for submission is 15th September 2007. A copy of RFQ [request for proposal] can be found at www.sct.gov.sa .
Marketing world
- IPTV is currently one of the hottest topics in the online world. Translating this into the world of marketing, major international agencies are assisting corporations [mainly in the UK and US] to embark into this area. To name a few such as Channel 4 [4onDemand], BT to proceed with iPlayer service and ITV unveiled its new streaming video-based ITV. Also Joost, IPTV platform launched by Kazaa and Skype, and not to mention other media such as SKY, Virgin etc. This is driven by huge advertising opportunities as similar to advertising in the conventional TV slots. Currently, France has the largest number of IPTV subscribers in the world, with three of the world's four largest IPTV service providers [Free, Orange France Telecom and Neuf Cagetel].
- Battle for in-game advertising is heating up particularly as EA [the US gaming giant] is currently developing several popular sports games. Sports game is the best venue of in-game advertising. Recently, Microsoft has won several deals with EA, defeating Google in rights to advertise in these games developed by EA. Dont be surprised to see more types of games [non-sports such as strategy, campaign etc] have lots more ads when you are playing!!! - Imagine, when you are playing "Tekken/Doom" and you are thirsty, and to increase your energy level, you have to drink Coca Cola? or Red Bull?? Or maybe, in Tiberian Sun, your military vehicles can boast its speed by using Shell's premium oil?? or Petronas?
- interesting to see how one agency came out with an idea to market Mercedes-benz's latest range CL-Class coupe [several weeks ago], pricing around £100k, same bracket with Aston Martins and Bentleys. It was an exquisite man-made leather envelope, [mimicking the same leather used in the car], with highly polished chrome plate as an inside, inviting the recipient to phone and arrange for a test drive. Of course, the invitations were only sent to selected potential customers. More interestingly, on how the overall marketing was delivered, including issues of sourcing the material for the envelope, discussion with Royal Mail, issues of stamping [Printed Postage Impression -PIP] logo, inks being used etc.
IT
- while we are said to be in the era of web2.0 [many definitions by technologist, but mainly to do with user interactions with webpage - such as wikipedia, blogging, social networking, RSS etc], experts are already trying out formulas for web3.0, which I am still blurr with the exact applications, but one of which is database driven. Google to read more...
- another interesting story is of a well known spam hunter, Patrick Peterson, who is an internet security expert working with one security specialist firm [part of Cisco]. He spent a year pursuing the spam criminals behind a giant spam attack. At the end, he never found the bad guys but learned a lots about fighting the spam.
Turkey
While some hardcore turkish feminist secularists are putting strong pressure on the government, comments by Gerald Knaus has strongly condemned the secularist. He said, "Turkey's authoritarian feminists have got it wrong. It is the maturing and development of Turkish democracy, the opening of Turkey to the EU and the development of a modern economy that holds out the promise of progress for Turkish women - not a return to secular authoritarian"
Gerald Knaus is director of the European Stability Initiative [ESI]. His article appeared in one magazine, issue August 2007.
Malaysia
Interestingly, DS Anwar is now officially "Ketua Imam Khalifah Besar Silat Seni Gayong" from 4th August 2007.
And Tun Dr Mahathir, is now a successful "entrepreneur" with plan to francising his Kedai Roti - The Loaf [Telaga Harbour, Pantai Kok, Langkawi] - a joint venture with a japanese, Jiro Suzuki.
Zifri
5th Aug 07
Oil Money
- "the silent" norway, is about to get approval later this year by the finance minister, to spend as much as GBP 20 bn on global property assets, being the europe's largest pension fund. This fund's size fuelled by revenues from oil reserves, has a total of Euro 220 bn, but previously been banned from investing in real estate. Norway was said to be the third largest oil exporter in the world. Two months ago, the fund hired a former investment banker from Merrill Lynch in anticipation of this change. He has since contacted many of his close friends in London, to seek investment opportunities in the UK and europe [and potentially outside Europe as well]. If you have a sound investment proposal, why not approach him...
- Similar situation with China, where several "government-related entities" are seeking to spread their wings globally and actively [due to piling up of huge reserve/export money], trailing Dubai/UAE and Qatar.
Traders
One of the highly paid job in the investment banking/hedge fund is a trader. However, with the advancement of quant algorithmic, many traders are becoming execution-only while the decisions are made by the computer. This is particularly true for several hedge fund industries where, all decisions are driven by a computer [not all strategies are computer driven though]. The top performing hedge fund sector - managed futures [see index by CS-Tremont] is mostly by computer. The same applies for global macro. This is one of the reason why the rich are getting even richer easily...you have to be a millionaire to invest in any of these double digit net return...
Sub-prime
- ever wonder why US sub-prime market issues not impacting so much in non sophisticated market? Well, the ripple is flowing to the market like London mainly due to derivative and hedge fund sectors. Billions of US sub prime debt for years have been bundled up [usually by investment banks], as CDO [collaterised debt obligations] and sold to banks, pension funds, hedge funds etc. The results [not complete list]; Bear Stearns recently suffered when three of its hedge funds losing the bulk of their value. Two weeks ago, Absolute Capital [Australian based], which invests in CDOs, temporarily suspended redemption for two of its funds. Basis Capital [another Australian], was "bailed" by Blackstone [private equity giant]. End of July, Citadel [which run by a billionnaire] has taken over credit portfolio of Sowood Capital, which was almost collapsed at that time. Later, it wound itself down. Macquarie suffered huge loss of its two funds, IKB Deutsche forced government to assume financial obligation worth Eur8bn.
This is turns, affected the ability to raise more finance for M&A, which for example, Blackstone struggles to raise debt for taking over Hilton, Cadbury extended the deadline for sale of its US arm, banks forced to postpone syndication of debt for Cerberus buyout and several more emerging.
Anyway, most bankers see this not as market meltdown but just a market corrections [since market has been overheating for a couple of years], ie the markets need to suffer 10% decline for the "correction" to apply.
I guess this condition will make it even more easier for new players [UAE-Dubai/Qatar/China/Norway - which are not affected so much of this sub-prime issues] to snap up the markets/expanding their portfolio.
Wealth
- US continues to be home to the largest number of the world's millinaires (2.7m) and the largest amount of HNWO [high net worth individuals - people with net assets >US$1m, excl primary residence and consumables. Europe the second, with UK leading the region. Amongst muslim countries, the highest growth of HNWI are Iran, Saudi Arabia and UAE [listed here alphabetically]. Interestingly, philanthropy is of very importance service particularly to ultra-HNWI [>US$30m]. In addition to high profile donation by Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Sir Tom Hunter, etc, private banking sectors are rushing to expand their services to include philanthropy. Several hedge funds/asset managements have followed suit by having their own unit fund [rather than the investors donating directly into any known charities], as to the wealthiest city bankers, charity sector is not an efficient market and lack transparency on prices and data... [ranking above by Wealth Management & Private Banking Review - 2007/08 ]
In other words, to tap on these funds, the said charity must be professionally managed, think like a company and to network with the right people.
UK statistics
there are around 30m people in employment
-the top 10% [3m people] earn on average £105k pa before tax [although half of them have a gross income of less than £58k]
-the top 1% [300,000 people], the rich, earn on average £253k.
-the top 0.1% [30,000 people], super rich, earn more than £500k, with average income of £1.1m
- The £33bn combined income of the super rich makes up nearly 4% of all personal income in Britain, compared to 6% in the US and 2% in France.
-Almost two thirds of the top 0.1% are working in financial services
-340,000 people working in the financial services in the City, earn an average of more than £100k
-7 of top ten in the 2007 Sunday Times rich list were borned outside Britain.
Source: business magazine. august 07 edition, written by one economic consultant
World Class Tourism destination
With Dubai leads the way, many other countries nearby are following suit. The latest craze is Saudi Arabia, with its plan to develop Al-Uqair Coastal area as the premier world class tourism destination. Adverts have appeared in several business dailies/journals in the west last week, inviting interested parties to become Qualified Applicants to compete for the title of Master Developer. Deadline for submission is 15th September 2007. A copy of RFQ [request for proposal] can be found at www.sct.gov.sa .
Marketing world
- IPTV is currently one of the hottest topics in the online world. Translating this into the world of marketing, major international agencies are assisting corporations [mainly in the UK and US] to embark into this area. To name a few such as Channel 4 [4onDemand], BT to proceed with iPlayer service and ITV unveiled its new streaming video-based ITV. Also Joost, IPTV platform launched by Kazaa and Skype, and not to mention other media such as SKY, Virgin etc. This is driven by huge advertising opportunities as similar to advertising in the conventional TV slots. Currently, France has the largest number of IPTV subscribers in the world, with three of the world's four largest IPTV service providers [Free, Orange France Telecom and Neuf Cagetel].
- Battle for in-game advertising is heating up particularly as EA [the US gaming giant] is currently developing several popular sports games. Sports game is the best venue of in-game advertising. Recently, Microsoft has won several deals with EA, defeating Google in rights to advertise in these games developed by EA. Dont be surprised to see more types of games [non-sports such as strategy, campaign etc] have lots more ads when you are playing!!! - Imagine, when you are playing "Tekken/Doom" and you are thirsty, and to increase your energy level, you have to drink Coca Cola? or Red Bull?? Or maybe, in Tiberian Sun, your military vehicles can boast its speed by using Shell's premium oil?? or Petronas?
- interesting to see how one agency came out with an idea to market Mercedes-benz's latest range CL-Class coupe [several weeks ago], pricing around £100k, same bracket with Aston Martins and Bentleys. It was an exquisite man-made leather envelope, [mimicking the same leather used in the car], with highly polished chrome plate as an inside, inviting the recipient to phone and arrange for a test drive. Of course, the invitations were only sent to selected potential customers. More interestingly, on how the overall marketing was delivered, including issues of sourcing the material for the envelope, discussion with Royal Mail, issues of stamping [Printed Postage Impression -PIP] logo, inks being used etc.
IT
- while we are said to be in the era of web2.0 [many definitions by technologist, but mainly to do with user interactions with webpage - such as wikipedia, blogging, social networking, RSS etc], experts are already trying out formulas for web3.0, which I am still blurr with the exact applications, but one of which is database driven. Google to read more...
- another interesting story is of a well known spam hunter, Patrick Peterson, who is an internet security expert working with one security specialist firm [part of Cisco]. He spent a year pursuing the spam criminals behind a giant spam attack. At the end, he never found the bad guys but learned a lots about fighting the spam.
Turkey
While some hardcore turkish feminist secularists are putting strong pressure on the government, comments by Gerald Knaus has strongly condemned the secularist. He said, "Turkey's authoritarian feminists have got it wrong. It is the maturing and development of Turkish democracy, the opening of Turkey to the EU and the development of a modern economy that holds out the promise of progress for Turkish women - not a return to secular authoritarian"
Gerald Knaus is director of the European Stability Initiative [ESI]. His article appeared in one magazine, issue August 2007.
Malaysia
Interestingly, DS Anwar is now officially "Ketua Imam Khalifah Besar Silat Seni Gayong" from 4th August 2007.
And Tun Dr Mahathir, is now a successful "entrepreneur" with plan to francising his Kedai Roti - The Loaf [Telaga Harbour, Pantai Kok, Langkawi] - a joint venture with a japanese, Jiro Suzuki.
Zifri
5th Aug 07
My blog
It is my hobby to read various business/investment related magazines and I have been sharing several of my postings over various venues. Now I thought, it's best for me to post it in a blog.
Enjoy.
Enjoy.
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