Why would Temasek Holdings buy 63% of NIB Bank?

A strange thing has caught my attention. Temasek Holdings owns 63% of the 7th largest bank in Pakistan which reported a loss of USD 92 million due to bad loans.

Why would one of the world’s most politically powerful holding corporation own the 7th largest bank in a politically & economically unstable state where every tribe wants a country of its own? I generally do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity, but this different.. Even the interns at TH are from Harvard and Wharton.

So TH is definitely upto something other than money…

Lee Kuan Yew on India

Lee Kuan Yew is the man who took Singapore from the Third World to the First in just 30 years. Mr. Lee (as my dad would call him) was invited to speak at the 37th Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture on Monday, 21 November 2005 at New Delhi. You can read the transcripts here.

The speech is very interesting. He talks about what went wrong about India, without hurting anyone’s feelings. He also compares India & China, and how and what can India do.

For the people of India who claim to become developed by 2020 by hype & morale alone, I think his words are far too wise to be understood.

All that glitters are gold…

When Singapore was still desperately poor, its prime minister used neatly trimmed shrubbery to attract foreign investment. The prime minister ensured that the roads from the airport to the hotels were well kept and nicely groomed. He did this so foreign businesspeople would think that Singapore were “competent, disciplined, and reliable.”

The existence of sharply pruned shrubbery in a host country doesn’t usually enhance a multinational’s foreign investments. The shrubbery from the airport to the hotels was highly visible to potential investors, however, and was far easier to judge than, say, Singapore’s level of corruption. What makes things interesting is that the foreign businesspeople knew that Singapore knew that they would observe the quality of the road between the airport and hotels. Consequently, if Singapore couldn’t even go to the trouble of keeping up this road, it would signal that it wouldn’t make future accommodations to foreign capital.

These shrubberies were Singapore’s easily viewed cover, and as we all know , it’s pretty easy to judge a book by its cover. While evaluating a book’s contents takes some time, the message of the cover can be grasped in seconds. A book’s cover provides a signal as to its contents.