Singapore
In Singapore’s Shadows
From the late 1960s until last Sunday night, the closest Singapore has ever come to a race riot was in June this year when McDonald’s offered locals a Hello Kitty soft toy in blackface, with an order of burger and fries. Bad idea. The inner Singaporean was uncorked. Chaos reigned … read more >>
Myanmar’s Little Helper
Revolutions have a way of revealing inconvenient truths; the dictator is toppled, his cronies flee in haste while they can, and in the ransacked files of the regime’s abandoned palaces, the dark secrets of tyrants – and the hypocrisy of their embarrassed enablers, too – are revealed. But sometimes revolutions … read more >>
Singapore
Greetings Singaporeans You’ve likely arrived here because of the recent fuss after the airing of some inconvenient facts about the corporate history and possible conflicts of Foreign/Law Minister Shanmugam, that seemed to have stirred him (and his followers) http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/out-of-the-haze-a-singapore-spring/646/ Whenever one writes about Singapore, I get many emails from Singaporeans … read more >>
Out Of The Haze, A Singapore Spring?
When you are Singapore’s Lee family, and your clan has exercised absolute and uninterrupted control over its swanky specklet of Asia for 54 years, fellows like Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam are handy to have within your power court. K. Shanmugam, as he’s less tongue-twistingly known, may have escaped the attention of those … read more >>
Avoiding the grip of Singapore Inc
The island state’s government-owned corporations need us more than we need them, writes Eric Ellis. Yet we all know national interest goes both ways. ”A MISSED opportunity for both sides,” or so claimed the Singapore government’s quasi-official mouthpiece, The Straits Times, yesterday after the shock of Treasurer Wayne Swan’s knockback of Singapore … read more >>
Asian sirens cast a spell but leave some things to be desired
THEY’RE robust and the road to the future, but our nearest and dearest could resolve to do better, writes Eric Ellis THE new year is upon us, a fine time for cleansing resolutions. Corporate Asia could use a few, too, if only to make it more user-friendly for corporate Australia … read more >>
Singapore slung
SINGAPORE: THE city-state’s success as a financial haven for Asia’s wealthy is turning sour as GFC fallout enters the courts THE scene: the bar of an exclusive Singapore sports club in a pre-Christmas jolly. The clientele: a well-heeled coterie of expatriate and local private bankers, Asia’s masters of the universe … read more >>
Court of the Lion Kings; the moneymaking machine of Singapore Inc
IN THE fomenting debate over Singapore Inc’s bid to buy a most vital pillar of Australia’s economic architecture, there’s something deliciously apt that the decisive call on the Australian Stock Exchange will probably be made by Canberra’s independent members of parliament. Singapore doesn’t do independents, Mr Oakeshott. Indeed, it would … read more >>
Say a little prayer
New evangelical, deal-making networks are tiptoeing to the edges of power in south-east Asia. HOW to penetrate and plunder the supposed mysteries of corporate Asia? Many words, seminars and hectares of print space have been devoted in Australia to this apparently vexed question over the years. Leader after leader – … read more >>
Evangelical business network takes Asia
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World turns disapproving eyes on Singapore banquet
WERE every high school as wonderful as Singapore’s United World College. Each morning, a convoy of chauffeur-driven Mercedes, BMWs and SUVs sweep up to the expansive campus, dropping well-shod students dangling all manner of modish teenage bling; mobile phones, computers, designer this and that. The sumptuous grounds are more suggestive … read more >>
Formula for Excess
Singapore’s free-wheeling private bankers enjoyed the ride of their lives in the precrisis years, but with government intervention and a clutch of lawsuits looming, it looks as though many are finally running out of road. DESPITE ITS GLITZY new image as the latest hotspot to host a nighttime Formula One … read more >>