Gossip vs news (information)

News (information) would be useful. Gossip, sometiems is… But Gossip, can also be spiteful..

News (i.e. information)
Ms Pretty is going out with Mr X

Gossip
“Hey, did you hear, Ms Pretty is going out with Mr X. But i also hear Ms Pretty went out with Mr Y, and they broke of because Ms Pretty….. “

Seylan Bank – email circulation

Looks like someone is gunning for Seylan Bank – take a look at the attached story. A friend told me about this, and i asked her to forward me the email.

The thing is, if people believe and everyone starts to withdraw money, then the bank could fail. The writer makes his/her/its claim look plausible by quoting a Fitch report. Damn – what the Fitch report speaks about is a down grade of the outlook to negative - what it means is that there is a possibility of downgrading the ratings – but does not say anything about the bank going belly up – if it wanted to, the rating would be something like CCC i believe!

I hope the central bank would step in soon, and make some sort of a statement. We do not want a bank to crash just because of a run in the bank caused by an email (with no facts? no account details to check independently with the bank?). Remember Goldquest? Time always counts….

The email reads:

“last week i want to close my account at seylan bank. they refuse and said me to come next week. anyway at that time i had to home soon and i left. During new year time I met with some family members and got to know that seylan bank is having big trouble, they hav no money to pay to the people.also saw in the lbo website that they have no captial, you can see

http://www.lankabusinessonline.com/fullstory.php?newsID=62744908&no_view=1&SEARCH_TERM=2

my cousin brother working for ceylinco insurnace says lot of ceylinco people not putting they money into seylan because they are not trusting them.

he adviced me to remove my money from seylan bank and put to another bank. he said not to ask to close the account, bank will say no and block the account. he said to only to slowly take out all the money from the account and put to some other bank.

be careful with seylan bank, they are hiding a lot of problems. tell you family and friends to quietly take all money out of seylan before it collapses, after that happens you wont get any money back.

hoping this info can save your family members!!! “

Phishing for info..

There is a company called Stax in LK. And we have Odel, and echannelling. I got an email from Stax Surveys <surveys@stax.com> telling me about an offer…. Well, look at the part of the url and you will see that it did not arrive from Stax (the company)… someone, a sri lankan? is cleverly trying to get our data…

http://www.staxsurveys.com/EC02/ **** *****

changed as i think they can track my address is i type the rest….

The email went:
“While we understand that you are very busy, we are offering you a free shopping trip worth Rs. 500 at ODEL — Colombo’s top fashion house! All you have to do is take 10 — 15 minutes to answer this survey and share your thoughts on e-Channelling and some aspects of its service. Your contribution will greatly help e-Channeling enhance its level of service to you.

The survey closes on Saturday 28th March, and in appreciation for your effort, we are offering Rs. 500 worth of ODEL vouchers to the 100 respondents who accurately complete the survey. Should you wish to be eligible for this incentive, you will be asked to provide your contact information at the end of the survey. This information will be used only for the purpose of verifying your address.”

I got my salary, but you?

I bank with Sampath Bank. Not sure whether the company that i work for has a Sampath Bank account, but i got my salary on Thursday. I know, that by Friday afternoon, colleagues who banked with HSBC didn’t have their salary in their accounts….

On Thursday night (around 2000 or so) i paid my mobile bill using the internet banking facility. By today morning (say around 0900) the amount had been credit to my mobile account…. now, when i pay by HSBC, it takes about a day for the money to be credited to my mobile account….

Hey, Bankers, leave our cash alone!

NTB – 14.5% Guaranteed?

Earn up to 40% interest goes the advertisement which appeared in two English newspapers today. I wonder how (Nations Trust Bank) NTB is allowed to claim that it will give 14.5% guaranteed. My understanding is that only the government could issue such a risk free return (by saying its guaranteed, does it not sound as if its a sure thing?) . Not many things in life are guaranteed – and the interest payments are definitely not one of them! they should not be allowed to advertise as such.

Any legal / marketing view on this?

Guns don’t kill?

Been sometime since the shooting at Virginia Tech. I have read about the killings; was hard to miss. I cannot believe that those in power, the politicians are still not brining in laws to regulate fire arm ownership in the US. Looks like only Clinton had the balls to do something about it, and Bush undid it.

The feeling that i got when i heard a Q&A session between a BBC reporter and the shop owner, is so difficult to put into words. Disgust, probably would at least to a limited extend explain it. The BBC correspondent asked the shop owner about this massacre and gun sales, and the shop owners reply was something in the line of “well, if the other students and the teachers were armed, they could have defended themselves”. Nice- more sales, more money? was that what he was thinking? what about possible killings? what about laws and regualations that might have stopped him from making such a sale to a person who was a danger to society?

From the Economist: ” After the Virginia Tech massacre“

“In 1994 President Bill Clinton approved a bill banning assault weapons (covering semi-automatic rifles plus high-capacity magazines for handguns) and the year before that a bill imposing a requirement for background checks.”
” Mr Bush however, has done active damage. On his watch the assault-weapons ban was allowed to lapse in 2004.”

The par value mix up :(

One of today’s newspapers had an lengthy article about pricey rights issues by our companies – JKH, Commercial and Dialog.  The writer compared the issue price with the par value, and arrived at a conclusion that the proposed Dialog rights issue carries a heavy premium as it is a LKR1.00 share (par value).

Is this conclusion correct? I mean, arriving at the conclusion based solely on the issue price divided by par value)? nope…

Why? because the value of a share reflects the value of the company, and the par value is just a number. Of course, there are legal and accounting implications due to the par value – but that is a different story.
If a company is work LKR100,000, and the company is issuing  100,000 shares, rational investors would pay LKR1.00 for the share. If the company issues 1,000 shares, a rational investor would pay LKR100 for the share… (legally, say the company registered the par value to be LKR5.00 the company would not be allowed to issue the share at LKR1.00 because it is below the par value)
Anyways, not all investores are rational… but that is not really a bad thing ;)

Cookie monster…eating stats?

How many of ye delete cookies? Do not have a real reason as such…i do it, because i can to be honest….I do it frequently – rather, i have set it so that firefox does it automatically – every time i close the browser ;) I am writing this after reading Rantatunga’s post about a counter.

A lot of people, i guess especially those who blog like to know how many people visit their site(s). Some programmes categorises visitors as returning visitors, and first time visitors.
Now, my automatic deleting of cookies would skew the stats: overstate the number of unique visitors, and understate the number of returning visitors. However, it would not have an effect on total number of page loads.

Wonder what those who own sites would primarily be interested in knowing… number of returning visitor? new visitors? length of stay? Guess different people would want to know different things…
I am not too technically sound, and am definitely not going to edit any HTML or whatever. So, i will just use the stat numbers shown by WordPress. WP does not differentiate between returning visitors and first time visitors…. would love to know the number of returning visitors though…. but aha, i will not edit/install code to check on it (at least in the near future)… inertia?

Dialog raises funds…(market liquidity?)

First, JKH had a major rights issue. And now, Dialog raising funds….

Not sure exactly what proportion of JKH is owned by foreigners. In case of Dialog,88% is owned by T-Mal (which will participate in the rights issue). More foreign owned, the less it will effect total market liquidity. Why? because if the bulk was held by locals, they would probably have to a) sell existing shares, or b) withdraw from banks to participate in the rights issue. If foreign owned, ‘new’ money would come in. It is better for the local market.

Tried logging into Fitch (sri Lanka) but could not view the ratings document. However, the ratings document is available at LBO, and i simply love the way the credit analyst has gone about looking at the company.

Wonder what the equity analysts thinks of the stock (as opposed to the company)? Dialog is a strong company (growing industry, and good management) – but what about the valuation of the stock?

Can click here to get to Dialog investor relations (IR).
Can click here to get to T-Mal IR

Hmmm IMO, Dialog website works much better than T-Mal… ;)

Coffee stop – Cinnamon

Love the place. Nice place to hang out with – especially with the live music. Price is very reasonable. However, the place gets pretty crowded and gets pretty difficult to find a place to sit!

If you order an Irish Coffee (uhm, expensive – but very good….) they come and make in front of you, setting the spirits on fire etc.

I once had a bad experience with the bar. I was a bit too tipsy after another function, and  had one at the bar. Paid by cash – they overcharged….