I came across Bodyrock TV on youtube and through surfing the net. The personal fitness lady who demonstrates the exercise routine has such a killer bod that I always feel my fats and love handles each time I watch one of her latest workouts. I used to be slightly unfit in JC, lost quite a lot of bodyfat during full-time NS times, went through periods of fitness and relative unfitness in my 20s to 30s before the birth of my daughter 2.5 years ago let me shed my weight from 69 kg to a more manageable 63 kg now. I aim to maintain my current weight by exercising more and to do more exercises like those in Bodyrock TV.

Why am I talking about health and fitness?

No amount of money and financial freedom can be enjoyed if you don’t have good health.

I realise that I’m still not investing enough of my time to exercise (at least three times a week for 30 mins each) even though I can do so after my daughter is asleep or before she wakes up. I can also do so during lunchtime so I have absolutely no excuses other than my own laziness and inertia!

I’m posting a link to the workout video above to continue to remind myself to EXERCISE REGULARLY and GET FIT!

How do you invest in your health?

Share with Panzer in the comments section.

Be well and prosper.

This post is somewhat chilling and may literally scare some readers who may not be mature enough to read it. You have been warned Read on to learn more about thinking about your own TEOWAWKI…

Survivalism and TEOWAWKI

When I was a teenager, I loved playing computer games. The Wizardry, Ultima series of fantasy dungeons and dragons type of role-playing games where where I got immersed into the imaginary worlds created by the developers. As I go older, I graduated towards real time strategy (RTS) Command and Conquer types before adulthood resulted in me having less interest in gaming now that I’m closer to 40 than 20 in age!

One of the better games I played was “Wasteland” by Electronic Arts. It was a post-apocalyptic role-playing game that sees you bring a group of adventurers across the wasteland of Nevada to uncover a mystery and survive against hobos, mutant robots and other nasties.

Why am I talking about “Wasteland” and TEOWAWKI?

The reason why I explore this theme of survivalism and TEOWAWKI scenarios is because they are getting more real in today’s age. We are now as Handy described in his book, “The Age of Unreason” where CHANGE is happening all the time and with increasingly speed and impact. Understanding the possibilities of TEOWAWKI allows us to be better prepared to mitigate its effects and to survive it.

Life is Totally Unpredictable

Games like Wasteland talk about apocalyptic events, where something serious happens that disrupts our way of life as we know it. Hence, “The end of the world as we know it” (TEOWAWKI) is a phrase to denote paradigm changing events. If you are a follower of post-apocalyptic films and books, you will realise that the scenarios played where the earth is close to being wiped out include mega asterioid strike (see films such as “Armageddon“, “Deep Impact“) which incidentally is one of the popular theories about what killed the dinosaurs.

Other films include “The Day After Tomorrow” where extreme climate change causes huge disruptions to life and many people die trying to survive such calamaties. Games such as “Wasteland” or films such as “The Book of Eli“, “Terminator” series of films also use a post-nuclear war  scenario as the cause of TEOTWAWKI.

Increasingly, TEOTWAWKI scenarios are not so far fetched after all. Think back to the financial crisis in 2008 as well as the recent European sovereign debt problems. The financial meltdown of markets in equities, property, bonds and other related assets is very possible in our lifetimes. Even Singapore was not spared the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis as well as SARS in 2003.

In short, ANYTHING can happen and possible TEOWAWKI scenarios can play out whether we are prepared for them or not.

On a personal scale, I’ve experienced my near TEOWAWKI event when my spouse and I almost split up. It totally devastated me emotionally and rebuilt me up from scratch. All sense of self was lost in that episode but the irony is that because we went to the brink to near-collapse of the marriage, we are now somewhat reconciled back and am taking the marriage on a day-to-day basis to bring up our daughter together.

My own personal upheavals has made me more aware of how what we take for granted as the world that we know can totally collapse very quickly.

Preparing Yourself for Your Own TEOWAWKI

I’ve seen the Asian financial crisis with my own eyes and went through the 2003 SARS period. My own personal near armageddon made me more aware about how uncertain life really is and not to place too much hope in our external environment. For one thing, I now trust the stock market much less than when I first started.

While I have been fortunate in making decent returns (exceeding two times fixed deposits interest rates) from the stock market, I know it has been largely luck. Thus, it is challenging to replicate such returns consistently all the time. Hence, my own investment strategy now is not to have anything more than 50% of my investible savings in stocks and shares. I currently have 33% and am not really thinking hard on enlarging it.

The external environment is more challenging to control, hence I reallise I must control myself more. I will continue to invest in building up experiences, skills and knowledge that makes me better able to survive the uncertainties of today’s world. Thus, I need to build up useful skills to help me survive a future where I may not be able to retire with the same lifestyle in Singapore. Hence, my previous post talking about retiring in Thailand because of the lower cost of living in making my retirement income stretch much further in the Land of Smiles

Learning Thai, getting a class 2B licence and continuing with my toastmasters activities are part of building up useful skills for the future. But I am also considering survivalism principles into day-to-day life.

Survivalism

If you are into survivalism, it is about preparing yourself for TEOWAWKI scenarios. While having fallout shelters and being able to survive a global thermonuclear war is possibly out of the question for a place like Singapore, surviving flood or having power cut off for 72 hours may not be such a stretch as recent flooding in Singapore shows that even in our supposedly “first world” country, there can be localised blackouts and flooding.

Hence, I’m going to also start to prepare my 72 hour emergency bag or bug-out bag. If you read the Singapore Civil Defence literature, this is about preparing food, clothing, water, personal hygiene and medical items to survive 72 hours in an emergency before help can get to you. The US FEMA and even our own SCDF has guides to help us on that.

Financial survivalism principles are also important. Your investible savings are actually part of your life energy. You traded your life force through working or running a business to accumulate the savings, thus, it’s useful to think of how you will protect and grow your investible savings. It is with that mindset that I arrived at my internal maximum 50% rule on putting my investible savings into equities.

The more I read about TEOWAWKI and survivalism, the more I realise that most people in Singapore will not be able to fathom the possibility of such scenarios because you can hardly be self-sufficient in Singapore. Not much space to escape to (except perhaps for Ubin residents) and even if you have a fallout or disaster shelter, you have to emerge eventually when you stores run out to the post-TEOWAWKI scenario.

I believe I want to build up enough reserves to survive a localised TEOWAWKI scenario to be in a better position than others to survive it. However, I also know that if the post-apocalyptic type of global disaster really occurs, then perhaps our time on earth is really destined to be short.

Whatever it is, having a TEOWAWKI mindset to detach oneself from day-to-day worries does alter your perspective somewhat. Smaller, petty inconveniences in life pale in comparison to potential TEOWAWKI scenarios.

Have you ever considered TEOWAWKI scenarios in your financial planning?

Share with Panzer in the comments section.

Be well and prosper.

Buckhead home from flickr by The Gifted Photographer

I just made a significant mortgage loan payment using my CPF ordinary account which currently stands at $0.15 as at today. My special and medisave accounts are reasonably funded as there’s not many avenues for me to tap on those funds nor would I want to as they are meant for retirement and medical needs in the future.

Looking back, my net-worth is at a relatively low stage compared to two years ago mainly because I have used my savings to top-up. My current new home is funded using proceeds from sale of my old home plus my CPF ordinary account and cash savings accumulated since paying off my previous home’s mortgage.

Technically, my mortgage can be completely paid up today if I want to but I decided to keep some of it (below $100,000) and build up a stronger cash on hand position for more flexibility in investment decisions I may make in the short-term (next 2 years or so).

When Your Net Assets Doesn’t Move Much

I sometimes feel impatient when I see that I am slowing down in my journey towards having $1,000,000 in investible net worth (excluding residential home). During army days, we call the situation of stagnating as “hentak-kaki” or marching on the spot; there appears to be much movement but you’re not getting anywhere.

Basically my net asset position has stagnated because the savings that I have obtained since I paid off my previous home has been invested in my current home which cannot be monetised unless I sell or rent out the home.

Hence, looking at it purely from the figure for net investible savings (which excludes value of my current new property) I have actually lost some ground in my journey towards financial freedom.

Looking at the Positives

However, I’ve gained in other ways that are not immediately tangible. My current property is in a better neighbourhood and the ability to rent for higher rental income is there relative to my previous property. My current place has a bigger floor area and is quieter. Such qualities can be monetised in the future should the rental or sale be required.

During the process of moving home, I also realised that despite my net worth stagnating using the conservative calculation of excluding value of current property I start to understand more about how I am really the main cash flow generating asset.

I’ve taken another step towards getting myself an appointment as an independent director. This is something I’m working on as a possible post-62 career as well as a way to monetise my assets as an accounting and audit trained professional. It is about building up my CV now for better earnings in the future.

Another realisation is that I’m getting less fixated about the numerical targets set for my eventual financial freedom but getting more interested in enjoying the process and the journey. I now network more to get connected with people just to understand more about life outside of my own routine rather than to seek to benefit from the “guanxi” that can be derived. I’ve started to build myself more into a linchpin in my own career and personal life rather than to be a passive rider on this roller-coaster ride that is life.

Counting is important but making your life count is also more important

The key realisation is that setting, counting and hitting targets in life is important. We do what we measure and we need to pursue tangible goals to know if we are on track or not in our life goals. But more importantly, it sinks in that making my life count more is more important even as we track the numbers that give us the feedback on how well we’re meeting our goals.

How are you counting your net assets and how do you make your life count?

Share with Panzer in the comments section.

Be well and prosper.

Photo by Alan Cleaver

If you dig a little deeper into your own intrinsic motivations for being financially free, it has its roots in trying to be happy.

We live in Singapore Inc. which is a place that worships money. Money makes Singapore go round and we need it to put food on the table, to pay our bills and to sustain our lifestyles. Yet, more and more studies show that while money and happiness are correlated, our day-to-day satisfaction with life go beyond money if we have managed to meet our basic needs.

Money Can Buy One Form of Happiness

This article from the Washington Post tells us that money can indeed buy one form of happiness. But it still is not the be-all and the end-all to becoming happy. It goes on to say that:

But the survey also showed that a key element of what many people consider happiness — positive feelings — is much more strongly affected by factors other than cold, hard cash, such as feeling respected, being in control of your life and having friends and family to rely on in a pinch.

Thus, positive feelings on a day-to-day basis is dependent more on non-monetary factors that are affected a lot by the quality of the relationships you have with people. That is what I am discovering as well. Really, money is a hygiene factor that must be met so that we are NOT unhappy but by itself money doesn’t satisfy totally.

The repercussions of this is that the journey towards financial freedom becomes more important than the goal itself. It is critical that we enjoy our journey towards financial freedom while working towards the goal or we might find ourselves one day asking ourselves, “Is this all there is to achieving financial freedom?”

I realise that working towards being a “renaissance man” or a person with multiple interests who makes use of his left and right parts of his brain is critical to having a fulfilling journey towards financial freedom.

Concentrating enough of our lives into our careers, family, friends and self is important to achieve that balance and personal growth that generates the positive day-to-day feelings.

Panzer’s Journey At Work

My career now sees me plying my trade in internal audit but also involves being a manager of people. Even within my small team, I encountered human resource issues that arise within my team and have to sit down and talk to people to get them resolved. I learnt over time that some issues cannot be resolved but my staff feels better after getting the issues off their chest and out into the open.

Thus, even as my career generates the cash flows in my journey towards financial freedom, it also gives me the opportunity to develop other aspects of my career, that is to be a manager who is both a leader and a mentor plus counsellor to the staff.

How does this help me in my financial freedom journey?

My staff are the ones who carry out the detailed work activities under my direction and supervision. Without them, I cannot accomplish as much by myself. Hence, my value-add is to get them to value-add to the organisation thus multiplying the positive outcomes from the department’s perspective.

They help me achieve my key performance indicators which in turn are how my own financial rewards in career are determined. Of course, I also do my part but once you achieve a certain degree of seniority in your career and manage people, you realise your success depends on helping your team succeed in their objectives and tasks.

Thus, if my staff are happy, I am happy and the organisation also benefits from their increased quantity and quality of output. The money equation in their compensation package is mostly a hygiene factor and I need to focus more on the quality of intra-office communication and individual coaching of my staff to really obtain engagement.

Ultimately, my own journey towards financial freedom which requires my career to continue to thrive requires a functional team that is happy through the respect and control that I grant to them to manage their work assignments.

What is your view on happiness and money?

Which comes first, money or happiness?

Share with Panzer.

Be well and prosper.

“Greed is good”

Wall Street 2

In terms of net worth position, it actually doesn’t change much except that legal fees and property agent commissions has eaten into my net assets.

I am fortunate in that because I had earlier paid up in full my mortgage loan for my existing property, my current property can be paid up anytime as I have more than enough in my CPF ordinary account balances plus my cash on hand to redeem the loan in full. The reason why I took the loan in the first place was the timing difference between receipt of sales proceeds and payment of monies for completion of purchase.

Financial Freedom Target Still Some Distance Off

My net worth now is still a fair distance from my target of being financially free with $1 million in investible net assets (excluding value of home). However, it is a reasonably sound figure that puts me in good position to continue my journey towards financial freedom.

I will be making a significant capital repayment on the loan by end of July 2010 which will result in me having an cash-equity split of 67% : 33% . This means every dollar invested in equities in the SGX is matched by two dollars in cash. A financially conservative ratio that suits me because I am totally clueless about how the equities market will take. My sense is that volatility is still here due to European economic challenges that some pundits have forecasted could potentially be the reason for the implosion of the European Union as an economic and political bloc.

My focus now is on growing my means. Call it coincidence or fate, but I met someone during a recent conference who was in a position to help me grow my means through becoming  a paid director of a company. This was something that I had been thinking about and was in my mid to long-term plan but I didn’t count on such an opportunity presenting itself so early.

While there is nothing concrete now, at least the path towards this potential way to grow my means opens up real possibilities.

The more I travel along this journey along financial freedom, the more I am starting to develop a strategy that has one eye on what Nicholas Nassim Taleb shares in his book, “The Black Swan”. I am inclined to treat the stock market as more a game for small speculative plays and a temporarily respository of my net worth. The real cash flows will still have to come from earned income from my career and possible directorships in companies that can pay a reasonable directors’ fee. Of course, being an independent director has its share of risks of being liable for the mistakes or wrong-doing of the company management. But investing all your monies in the stock market also has the risk of seeing your net worth halve or become a quarter of what it’s worth if the stock markets go south.

Ultimately, I have to develop my own strategy towards financial freedom that is suited to my personality, skills and abilities. There is not set formula to ensure financially freedom. But I continue to believe in practising the principles of living within my means, saving and investing and growing/protecting my means.

How has your personality helped you towards your own style of investing?

Be well and prosper.

"Hope - Faith - Love - Luck "Flickr image by Funchye

The more I journey towards financial freedom, the more I believe in luck or fate in helping or hindering us towards our goal to be financially free.

Why do I say that?

Luck, Chance of Fate

There is an element of luck or chance in life. The way we are born. The way we are endowed with certain gifts or talents (or lack thereof). That we are alive and able to make it to this world from conception till birth to life.

But luck can only go so far because we need to be equipped to handle the cards we are dealt with using our inate abilities, skills and experiences.

I count myself lucky in that my family’s decision to buy a new place resulted in me selling some of my holdings at realised gains due to the run-up in share prices since the beginning of 2010. However, recent economic events in Europe, particularly over the state of sovereign debt in countries such as Greece and Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain has resulted in the Euro coming under pressure and resulting in another round of fear and uncertainty about the economic recovery.

When only a few months ago people were talking about recovery and growth. Now it’s back to gloom and doom with pundits saying now there is a serious risk of double-dip recession due to the euro issues.

Even as I cashed out and locked-in my new home, my equity holdings are now at a modest and comfortable level that I can hold for long-term, i.e. 10 years+ time frame for dividends.

I count myself fortunate that the decision to upgrade my home resulted in me increasing home equity but allowed me to lock in realised gains from share holdings. The current prices of shares now are way below what was 1-2+ months ago.

Again, this reminds me that I cannot “time” the market right on my own. We make decisions looking forward and can only analyse the correctness of the decisions looking back. Thus, one needs to move forward and make the best decisions on limited information but guided by the principles of financial freedom.

Following Your Principles Creates Luck

When you follow the principles of living within your means; saving and investing; growing and protecting your means, you are creating your own luck. You are not as affected by the fickleness of the markets nor worry daily as stock or other asset prices go up (or down).

With the savings accumulated from living within one’s means, you are better able to ride out these financial storms and even scout for opportunities to buy more value-stocks in sound businesses for the long-term.

With focussing on growing your income from career or business and from prudent investments, one also grows one’s investible capital to be suitably employed for reasonable returns (at least 2 x fixed deposits for me) and safety of capital.

This luck is knowing that one is less susceptible to market forces and is responsive enough to ride out the inevitable economic cycles that is the feature of a capitalistic society like Singapore.

How have you created your own luck or found yourself lucky in your personal journey towards financial freedom?

Share with Panzer.

Be well and prosper.

Flickr image "Children, full of happiness" by HAMED MASOUMI

My own daughter continues to teach me as she grows up how important a child-like curiosity about the world is to becoming financially free.

At two years plus, she has the energy to explore the entire home and to play with all types of objects ranging from common house furniture to her daddy’s old gadgets and CDs in addition to her zoo of stuffed toys, masak-masak and other books and flashcards.

How does she remind me about maintaining curiosity towards financial freedom?

Experimentation

Children are born naturally curious. Their early explorations of the world around them through play and pushing at mental and physical boundaries reminds us that in order to learn and grow, we should not forget to exercise our curious nature and continue to learn more about our world.

One of the large parts of our world is finances and for me to be aware of what it takes to be financially free, I continually read and expand my mental models on what is achieveable and what I can try to do to gain this objective.

My own experimentation with investing directly in stocks and shares on the SGX as well as blog monetisation were born out of a mixture of curiosity as well as interest in trying to achieve my goal of having $1,000,000 investible capital by age 45.

It was (and still is) this drive that gets me to learn more about my career and to continually build skills relevant for today’s work processes as well as tomorrow’s potentially new areas. For instance, I just attended an internal presentation in my organisation that was about adopting Google Docs within one of our departments.

While the topic is not directly a day-to-day item in my work, the implications of them adopting this solution has an impact on the IT security and data risks as now they are starting to move applications into the cloud. As an internal auditor, we need to be aware and on top of how the business moves into new areas and what business and other risks it brings to the enterprise.

Learning Tangentially

This opportunity to learn tangentially has been a great feature of working in my current organisation and I realise it will help me understand the various business activities going on which I would need to understand in order to assess risks appropriately and identify potential gaps (if any).

Looking back at my own journey towards financial freedom, if I had not exercised my curiosity to get myself interested to find out more about equities, foreign-currency fixed deposits, return on investments as well as risk/return trade-offs, I would still be stuck in my comfortable well of investing in fixed depsoits and seeing my money lose value to inflation.

My recent attendance at the DBS Annual General Meeting also opened up my eyes to what happens at a shareholders meeting and also to allow me to see what board members did during an AGM.

It is upon these building blocks of knowledge and experience about growing my means through prudent investments and some level of risk taking as well as understanding what I need to develop my career over time that will help me closer to my target of being financially free by age 45.

The process itself has been interesting and has enriched my life a lot not just from the pure returns on investment but in being a more learned person in practical ways towards being financially free.

Do you still have that child-like curiosity to learn about being financially free?

What are you doing now to help yourself grow that curiosity?

Share with Panzer.

Be well and prosper.

Flickr image "Hoh Rain Forest" by Lukas Fittal

When I first started out on this journey towards financial freedom, I was focussed on living within your means, saving and investing as well as growing and protecting your means.

These are still the pillars behind my strategy to achieve financial freedom, but I forgot to take into consideration the big picture, the why and reason for doing so. My lack of big picture thinking led me almost to miss the forest for the trees as I was putting my gaze only on the trees i.e. the hows of financial freedom without fully thinking through the whys.

What do I mean by all this?

What is Reductionism

I was reading James Handy’s “Age of Unreason” and realised that I was doing a bit of reductionism. I understood the techniques of financial freedom, i.e. living within your means etc, but failed to link back them to the over-arching reason why I needed to do so. I failed to align my plan towards financial freedom with my overall objective in life to be happy and financially free.

I missed out the fact that I can be happy even while I am pursuing my Road Map to Financial Freedom and that it does not have to be contingent upon achieving the goal of having passive income exceeding living expenses.

I can be happy if I hit my target of having investible net worth of $1,000,000. I can be happy even if I hit only $500,000 or even $50,000. The point is, happiness need not be contingent upon achieving that target.

It is the striving towards that target while experiencing life in terms of the day to day interactions with family, friends and colleagues and growing as an individual, constantly learning new ideas, concepts and knowledge that make me a happy person.

It was ironic that in the past I found myself trapped on some days when I thought I shouldn’t be spending to take a cab back or that I shouldn’t buy a car because it didn’t fit into the overall plan for financial freedom. It was this scarcity or Scrooge mindset that made me unhappy even though I was on track towards financial freedom.

Wholeness: Connecting the Dots

The older I become, the more I realise I need to connect the dots to find out what drives me in life. What gets me up in the morning? Increasingly, it is about family, friends and colleagues who make your life more interesting. It is about growing as a person, each day learning new stuff at work and in inter-personal relationships. Becoming more attuned to this whole concept of life.

“The Art of Possibility” by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander also reminded me of the lessons I got from a Landmark Forum training I attended. Basically, life happens. But we invent the story we tell ourselves about life, in that it is our perception of reality that forms our reality.

We actually hold a lot of power in terms of managing our own perceptions of reality. Sh*t happens. But how we choose to react and go forward in our lives despite the sh*t will determine the quality of our lives.

Currently, I am into a personal growth spurt as I’m reading a lot more in the last 6 months than the whole of last year combined.

I find that I’m happiest when growing the connections within my brain with concepts, theories and practice on management, leadership, personal development and technical audit related knowledge. Reading non-fiction where it relates to areas I’m interested in is FUN!

I realise I must follow the cycle of learning involving the phases of  (1) Question (2) Theory (3) Testing (4) Reflection to order to grow as a human being. Many of my small success in blog monetisation was going through this phases by testing out concepts I learnt from others and changing it until I found a viable solution that worked.

Similarly in my quest for financial freedom, I start to do more testing and reflection and it helps me become more comfortable with my portfolio allocations at any point in time because my asset mix between equities, cash and cash equivalents reflect the cash flow needs and risk tolerances at that point in time.

Even in my working life, I realise it is by practising the cycle of learning by trying out stuff I learn from books into real life that will pay dividends in the near and long-term future.

Share with Panzer on how you determine what is your overraching reason for getting up in the morning!

Be well and prosper.

Having started investing in shares since 2003, I finally did what a shareholder is expected to do, that is to attend an annual general meeting and actually vote on the ordinary and special resolutions at the meeting with management and the Board of Directors of the business.

30 April 2010 2.00 P.M. was the Annual General Meeting for DBS group holdings. I have been an on-off investor in this share for a few years but only this time I still had 1 lot after taking profit on another lot for speculative play.

How I ended up at the Annual General Meeting

I happened to receive the annual report while still holding on to DBS and decided I should at least try to attend an annual general meeting of a listed company to find out just what happens at an AGM. What questions would shareholders raise and just what type of people actually invest in DBS and actually bother to attend AGMs?

I also had an “ulterior” motive in that I genuinely wanted to know how listed AGMs were carried out as one of my aspirations is to be a director on a listed company eventually when I am transiting to a different type of career post “retirement”. As I am an Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Internal Auditor, I do have the basic academic and professional experience to qualify to be a member of audit or finance committees and believe this is one development path for me post traditional “retirement”.

The answers to these questions were addressed at what I would call a very interesting session.

Registration

I learnt from attending the AGM that one doesn’t need to pre-register for them. Just appear with your NRIC as identification and the corporate secretariat services company doing the registration will verify your name against the register of shareholders and issue you with the annual report and other voting slip you require relating to the resolution to be passed.

Pre-AGM Briefing by CFO

Prior to the AGM, the CFO Chng Sok Hui gave a briefing on the financial highlights of the DBS group performance and also answered some of the shareholders’ questions. The briefing was fairly well presented and the slides were very clear. However, the shareholders, who consist mostly of retirees and men aged 50 and older were quite sharp in clarifying that the net profit for the year was flat. There were also specific questions on how the scrip dividends would be rounded off to the nearest share or fraction of the share and whether it would be rounded up or down. (Answer is that it would be rounded down to the nearest share).

AGM Proper

After the CFO’s briefing, the Board trooped in with their suits and took their seats. Mr. Priyush Gupta the new CEO was there as well as the other Board members. During the AGM, Mr. Koh Boon Hwee outgoing Chairman led most of the session in going through each item on the agenda.

My impression was that Mr. Koh was quite open and friendly to the shareholders. He even knew some of the shareholders who I believe are regular AGM attendees and who would “grill” him in previous AGMs based on the banter between him and them.

However, his adherence to the script in moving the meeting through the agenda items was flawless and gave shareholders every opportunity to ask questions before each vote was taken.

Given that DBS’s results were reasonable given that 2009 was a tough year due to the recession and after-effects of the sub-prime fiasco, shareholders were possibly less combative as last year judging on the comments made by Mr. Koh.

When it came to the item of his $4.5m special renumeration due to him stepping in as interim CEO before Mr. Priyush Gupta was appointed, Mr. Koh passed control of the meeting to the Chairman of the Compensation and Management Development Committee Mr. Kwa Chong Seng to take the matter through the meeting. All motions were passed during the AGM.

Learning Points

I realised that AGMs are attended by mostly retirees and some working adults. There was hardly anyone below 25 in the room based on my casual scanning of the DBS Auditorium. The questions asked by the shareholders ranged from strategic ones relating to how was DBS’s China strategy developing and why Vietnam’s operations contributed so little.

There were also questions or feedback on service levels of DBS hotlines, ATMs etc. Specific questions on scrip dividend mechanics were also raised. There were also questions on whether DBS should consider trading in smaller lots e.g. like SIA 200 so that young people can own shares and give feedback to DBS.

I learnt that as a shareholder, it was your right to ask virtually any question so long as it was relevant to the motion at question. Mr. Koh gave fair latitude to shareholders so long as their questions had some relevance to the motion. But he was also very clear that some questions that were clearly irrelevant to the motion should not be addressed as other shareholders would not be concerned e.g. one shareholder who wanted to know how Mr. Gupta would respond to a past incident where he did not get his rights issues alloted through the DBS ATM due to his being shares being purchased using CPF instead of cash and that this fact was not sufficiently disclosed in the ATM.

Perhaps another more valuable point that was gained was the fact that as a shareholder, we actually own a share in the underlying business. This fact is understood at a theoretical level but as a shareholder at the meeting, it sinks into you from the nature of questions asked by the other shareholders.

Going forward, I think attending AGMs (with my good buddy Mr. Q) is an interesting way to learn more about how listed companies conduct themselves with their shareholders and get a sense behind the people who are in the driving seat of the company.

Have you attended any AGMs of listed companies and how was your experience?

Share with Panzer in the comments section

Be well and prosper.

P.S. I didn’t really meet Mr. Koh face-to-face. I only saw him from the comfort and safety of my seat