ANOTHER ELECTION GIMMICK?

The following post was written by DPP who blogs HERE and he shared it in a comment to one of my posts in unplugged so I am reposting it here for more airing. Thanks DPP for sharing.

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Hi MWS

Would appreciate if you gave max publicity to my letter to Mkini published tpday at http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/130103 and titled "Maika share sale an election gimmick?" It might help voters see straight at HS.

"I refer to the Malaysakini report New firm takes over Maika Holdings.

The salient facts about G Gnanalingam's recent offer to buy out all Maika shareholders are as follows:

1. Maika's paid up share capital - RM125 million.

2. Gnanalingam's offer price - RM106 million or RM0.85 per share.

3. Oriental Capital Assurance Bhd's (Ocab) paid up share capital is RM100 million and as at Dec 31, 2008 it's audited NTA was about RM103 million.

4. Maika's investment in Ocab's share capital is 74.165% or 74,174,640 shares, ie, Maika is Ocab's holding company as it has both more than 51% equity shares and control in Ocab. Maika's CEO Vell Paari a/l Samy Velu also sits on the board of directors of Ocab.

5. Prior to Gnanalingam's buyout proposal, there were two other offers to Maika as follows:

a. RM129 million or $1.75 per share by Salcon

b. RM149 million or $ 2.01 per share by Usaha Tegas, the holding company of tycoon Ananda Krishnan.

The Salcon offer was frozen by a court order taken out by Nesa Cooperative, Maika's single largest shareholder who had objected on the grounds that Maika's 74% investment in Ocab had not been independently valued.

Nesa had recommended the investment in Ocab be sold by open tender. Nesa also revealed there were two other parties interested in acquiring Ocab's shares, one from Europe and another from Australia.

As to the RM149 million offer by Usaha Tegas, apparently Maika rejected this offer as it could not accept certain pre-conditions insisted upon by Usaha Tegas. What these pre-conditions were have not been revealed by Maika's directors.

In the light of the above, I demand the board of directors of Maika explain:

1. Why do they think Gnanalingam's offer of RM106 million is suddenly acceptable to them when they unequivocally know there are local market players in the insurance business and foreign parties who are willing to pay more?

2. Why are they unwilling to offer the Maika or Ocab shares for sale by open tender with a reserve price of say, RM150 million, given the Usaga Tegas offer? If as Gnanalingam says, Maika's debts are RM30 million, the net minimum proceeds of RM120 million would be a fair and handsome reward to Maika's shareholders who for some 20 years have received no dividends while there was a period when their CEO was paid a remuneration of RM15,000 per month.

As to Gnanalingam being quoted as saying he's doing 'national service', he contradicts it by saying he will need six months to find another financier which suggests he is looking at flipping the Maika/Ocab shares for a quick gain. So much for national service.

Financiers may do charity work and make sizeable donations from their profits and gains, but their natural predatory instincts mean they will always squeeze out the juicy bits of the best deals for themselves.

It seems clear to me, and for the matter any sane person, that the Maika/Ocab shares are worth a hell of a lot more than Gnanalingam's RM106 million offer.

The RM64,000 question is why Samy Vellu, Vel Paari and the Maika board of directors appear to be not interested in maximising returns to their long-suffering shareholders which include themselves by supporting the lowest offer?

Is there a deal behind the deal?"

Thank you.

dpp
we are all of 1 race, the Human Race

THE END OF A LONG BATTLE

It was with much sadness and a broken heart that I read the following article from New Scientist HERE by Kate MacAlpine about the decades-long tug of war between environmental and indigenous groups on one hand and the Brazilian government on the other when a Brazilian energy consortium won the right to build what will become the world's third-largest dam.

Almost 27 years ago, I worked as a writer with Friends of the Earth and from then, I have always had a love for the environment. I have blogged about quite a number of environmental issues in this blog. In Malaysia, particularly in Sarawak, there are similar issues faced by many because of the construction of dams. We have only one planet and at the rate things are going downhill, we may not have much a planet to leave to the next generation. When will man learn that the environment is of MORE value than money?

Do read the following article and please leave a comment if you wish to share your thoughts and views. Thanks! Have a nice day!

EXTRACTED FROM HERE:

The controversial Belo Monte dam on the Xingu river in the Brazilian Amazon, a tributary of the Amazon, could power as many as 23 million homes. But since its proposal 20 years ago, it has been the subject of a vitriolic dispute with the government on one side and indigenous people and green groups on the other.

The latter say it would flood 500 square kilometres of farms and rainforest and prevent the migration of fish that are a major food source for 800 indigenous communities. CLICK HERE for more.

WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE SMARTER?

This evening, I came across a New Scientist article on Picking Our Brains : Nine Neural Frontiers and another interesting one on WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE SMARTER? which I thought I'd share with you....

Excerpt from HERE:

AT EINSTEIN's autopsy in 1955, his brain was something of a disappointment: it turned out to be a tad smaller than the average Joe's. Indeed, later studies have suggested a minimal link between brain size and intelligence. It seems brain quality rather than quantity is key.

One important factor seems to be how well our neurons can talk to each other. Martijn van den Heuvel, a neuroscientist at Utrecht University Medical Center in the Netherlands, found that smarter brains seem to have more efficient networks between neurons - in other words, it takes fewer steps to relay a message between different regions of the brain. That could explain about a third of the variation in a population's IQ, he says.

Another key factor is the insulating fatty sheath encasing neuron fibres, which affects the speed of electrical signals. Paul Thompson at the University of California, Los Angeles, has found a correlation between IQ and the quality of the sheaths (The Journal of Neuroscience, vol 29, p 2212).

We still don't know exactly how much genes contribute to intelligence, with various studies coming up with estimates ranging from 40 to 80 per cent. This wide range of estimates might have arisen because genes contribute more to IQ as we get older, according to a study published last year. By comparing the intelligence of 11,000 pairs of twins, Robert Plomin of King's College London found that at age 9, genes explain 40 per cent of the variation, but by 17 they account for roughly two-thirds (Molecular Psychiatry, DOI: 10.1038/mp.2009.55). CLICK HERE TO READ MORE.

Interesting, isn't it? Do you agree with this? Do leave a comment if you wish to share your thoughts and views. Thanks!