Philip Chua Business Blog

Posts Tagged ‘LAST’

· With real estate prices rebounding and new launches selling out, is the Singapore property market overheating again? LAST month, my next-door neighbour dropped by with a requisition to convene an extraordinary general meeting of our condominium. For what else but an en-bloc sale? The dream of some owners and the nightmare of others. The key to real estate prices is affordability. In t... more

That new HSBC loan: too clever by half?
Why not give customers the money outright?

By SIOW LI SEN

LAST Friday, when given the HSBC press release on its new Sibor plus equity-linked mortgage, I spent at least 15 minutes trying to figure out how it worked. The result was that I was so consumed with the promise of thousands of dollars that I paid no attention to the home loan itself.

Eventuall… more

In a very quiet week the most important development was the release of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Financial Stability Review. Not surprisingly the assessment of the health of the Australian banking system was glowing. The banks’ growth since the last recession has concentrated on mortgages. Whereas in the last…

LAST year, more than 10,000 investors who had invested in Lehman-linked structured products lost their money when the US investment bank collapsed.

Seven months later, after an extensive investigation, the 10 financial institutions (FIs) who peddled these products have been punished. They have been banned from selling this type of product for periods ranging from six months to two years. Still, … more