By Goh Eng Yeow
Markets Correspondent
engyeow1@sph.com.sg

 

IT IS in panicky times such as these, that the email inbox gets clogged with requests to help investors recover losses on financial products which they claimed they were misled into buying.   

I even got an email from an old friend about a blog asking why there seemed to be a complete news blackout on the efforts made by Hong Kong to help distressed Lehman minibond investors. In particular, it cited DBS Hong Kong's "kind" offer to compensate affected minibond holders 

Let's at least try to get the facts straight on DBS. There is such a massive flow of information in the past four weeks that some facts got buried.  

In Singapore, DBS did not sell any Lehman minibonds at all. 

I verified this fact with the bank when I turned up to watch a meeting convened by disgruntled investors at its Shenton Way branch yesterday.  

Let's be fair to the bank. How is it supposed to make restitution on a product which it had not sold?

What DBS did distribute was another product which came with a Lehman component - the DBS High Notes Five. This has indeed gone sour after Lehman Brothers collapsed. 

I would be very worried if this product had been sold through the bank's vast POSB network to small-time depositors like my aged dad and mom who cannot read or write English - let alone know the difference between principal protected and principal guaranteed. 

As it turned out, DBS High Notes Five was only sold to priority banking customers - people with $250,000 or more in deposits with the bank. 

Not many Singaporeans are so privileged to have so much cash, one of my friends pointed out. They are likely to be highly-paid professionals and business people. 

Many years ago when I started reporting on the financial beat, such "privileged" bank customers were described as "sophisticated" investors. 

They are supposed to be armed with the expertise to understand complicated financial transactions. Otherwise, they would not have been able to accumulate so much savings, unless they strike 4-Ds or Toto. They are nobody's financial fools.

From my observations of the whole sorry episode, the matter could have been handled better. 

DBS could have nipped the problem in the bud by working much harder to clear the misconception that the High Five notes was a retail financial product which had hurt the naive mom-and-pop investor. Nothing was further from the truth. 

It is also costly. Try telling jittery fund managers in New York and London that it all boils down to improper understanding of the issue at hand.  

As a market writer, I find it very painful to watch the beating taken by DBS' share price because of this matter. 

True, the big picture is jittery and stock markets are falling worldwide. But since Monday, DBS has fallen 7 per cent. In contrast, OCBC Bank is down 3.4 per cent and United Overseas Bank has slipped 4.9 per cent.