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Companies selling in Singapore must have a Singaporean or PR as a director. It’s seems to me reasonable that these people should take some responsibility for understanding the product they are selling and the claims they are making. Surely directors must take some responsibility for the fees they take.
ReplyUpdate from meeting. If you take this at face value, how does a man who can’t visit a country expect Asian investment there. I assume it’s a story to string investors along until they get bored.
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Even if it was a S’porean company, investors will also be wiped out & legally there is nothing that investors can do about it.
Also in S’pore it doesn’t matter whether the company is big & rich, or some fly-by-night setup. If anything goes wrong, your “investment” will also be wiped out — you die is your biz; you went in with your eyes big-big — according to S’pore law. Just look at DBS & Minibonds, and other similar investments during the financial crisis. Or the CLOB fiasco in the 1980s, or the shenanigans of small-cap shares on SGX.
Frankly you will be better protected if your buy your investments in the US from tried & tested companies. The only thing is their taxes and estate duties.
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Dear xyz,
Yes you are right, if an investment goes bust, even if it is in Singapore and it’s a listed company, the chances of recovery would be low.
What I wanted to highlight was the additional risks of overseas investments in unregulated investments. You can’t see it and it’s hard to monitor regularly.
If it was really so attractive, why would the locals not buy into them? Why does the company have to incur additional much expenses to market it overseas?
There is also the additional risks of being a scam.
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In 2011, i also invested in ECO house project in Brazil for 23,000Gbp and when my contract matured in Dec 2012, they kept delaying payment desptie my constant compliant via email and tel phone calls. So when Ecohouse decided to set up their singapore office(Suntec) in Feb 2012, i decided to up the ante by barging into the CEO office, Mr. Armstrong to demand my payment. As expected he gave me the runaround about the delays in the Brazil’s government payment for completed projects and that cause some cash flow problems. I threaten to raise this issue at their presentations so prospective and existing clients would know their dleays in payment. Maybe i was lucky and maybe i went in with all guns blazing, the next day, he TT the money back to me plus i charged them for all the Fx losses incurred due to the delay. in the end, i made more than the original 20% contract interest.
My naviety in investing in projects was due to the escrow arrangement. it sounded unique and safe but even their UK escrow lawyers i noticed went bust. Martin is right, overseas investment projects are extremely risky esoecially for projects that require more than a year till maturity.
Dear George,
Thanks for sharing. Yes, your method might work if it is early days and a company is still in the process of trying to get investors. They can simply take other investors money to pay you off. Usually, sitting passively and waiting will end up with nothing back.
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