DUNIA SURAM BSKL CEMERLANG?

Demam ekonomi kini sudah melanda negara Eropah. Ini bermakna tidak ada satu benua yang dapat membantu (datang melabur) atau membeli barang yang tidak laku. Hanya negara China yang kelihatan dapat bertahan kerana ia mempunyai permintaan domestik yang tinggi. Yang lain terpaksa mencuba formula yang pelik-pelik tetapi kantul juga. Ada pula yang menipu dengan melonjakkan beberapa angka agar dapat diambil wang dari mereka yang tertipu. Padahal barang dan khidmat mereka sudah tidak laku dan hutang sudah terlalu banyak sehingga tidak mampu membayar dengan wang sendiri.

BSKL DIPACU UNTUK DISENTAP DANA ITU

Penyusunan semula sektor koporat Malaysia serta prestasi terkini BSKL nampak seperti satu kemajuan yang memberangsangkan sehingga ramai tertipu dengannya. Padahal ia satu permainan untuk menyentap dana pihak yang tidak perasan. Banyak syarikat kini sudah diambang kemelesetan sehingga tidak mampu membayar hutang. Untuk itu bank telah diberi kata dua agar memaafkan hutang yang bukan sedikit jumlahnya. Manakala BSKL pula dipacu tinggi agar 'hutang dapat bertukar kepada saham'. Kerajaan mahu BSKL nampak aktif dan mengancam agar ia dapat menyentap dana untuk 'menyusun semula' hutang.

SUSUN HUTANG ATAU ALIH HUTANG

Apa yang berlaku kini bukannya satu kemajuan tetapi mengalihkan beban dan kerugian kepada orang lain yang kurang perhatian serta penelitian. Perhatikan sipeminjam tidakpun dikenakan apa-apa tindakkan (guaman) kerana gagal membayar hutang - sebaliknya bank pula yang perlu menanggung kerugian.

Sepatutnya siberhutang yang LEBIH dipertanggung-jawabkan dan lebih terbeban kerana merekalah faktor UTAMA kerugian. Yang tersenyum riang akhirnya adalah sipenyangak dan ini memungkinkan mereka kembali semula untuk menyauk wang.... Ini bermakna penyakit tidak akan hilang kerana tidak ada pengajaran.

PEMINJAM LEBIH SAKIT DARI SIPEMINJAM

CDRC (Corporate Debt Restructuring Committee) kini telah diberi lebih kuasa untuk memaksa pemegang saham dan pemiutang agar memberi potongan hutang yang lebih besar. Ini bermakna bank perlu menelan kerugian yang lebih besar dari jangkaan dan terpaksa melupakan sebahagian besar hutang lapuk itu.

Contohnya, MBf Capital memohon agar dimaafkan sejumlah RM1.1 bilion daripada RM1.3 bilion hutang! Bank tiada pilihan kerana syarikat ini sudah menanggung kerugian bertokok sebanyak RM2.6 billion.

Syarikat Rekapacific yang pernah dikawal oleh anak Ling Liong Sik mungkin akan menjadi syarikat pertama yang ditendang dari BSKL kerana gagal menepati syarat penyenaraian. Ia gagal untuk menyediakan lapuran tahunan akaunnya sejak 1997 lagi!

HARAKAH MEMBERI FOKUS KEPADA EKONOMI

Harakah keluaran terbaru nampaknya sudah mula memberi fokus kepada sektor koporat. Usaha ini patut diberi pujian kerana disinilah Umno menyauk wang. Ia juga akan menelanjangkan tembelang Mahathir yang kini menjaga hal-ehwal kewangan. Tanpa wang Umno sudah lama tenggelam. Inilah realiti dan sumber kekuatan Umno yang sebenarnya..... Tanpa wang ia takkan mampu membeli orang. Jika ekonomi meleset akar-umbi Umno sendiri akan mengerang dan memberontak kerana mereka sudah tiada pilihan.

ANWAR FUNDAMENTALIS (AGEN TALIBAN?) ATAU AGEN CIA?

Satu ketika dulu kerajaan menuduh Anwar sebagai agen CIA sehingga ia dicatat dalam afidavit Murad Khalid. Sekarang Anwar dikatakan fundamentalis Islam pula seperti yang dilapurkan oleh Bernama yang menyetujui pendapat Amy Ridenour. Ini adalah dua kenyataan atau karekter yang bertentangan antara satu sama lain!! Apa sudah jadi dengan mesin propaganda kerajaan sekarang??? Atau sudah dilanda sindrom 'mudah lupa'?? Atau sudah terlalu haprak dan bangang agaknya??? Tidakkah ini menunjukkan kerajaan telah menipu rakyat sebenarnya?

-Ulasan Kapal Berita-

Rencana Rujukan:

http://business-times.asia1.com.sg/views/story/0,2276,18428,00.html

August 20, 2001

M'sia Inc revamp: pains are short-term

By Eddie Toh

IS there more upside for the Malaysian stock market, now that it has emerged as the best performing bourse in the world?

The Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange Composite Index (KLCI) has chalked up a gain of 100 points, or 18 per cent, to 655.76 points in less than three months. But although impressive, the market barometer is still only half way from its historical high of over 1,300 points in 1994.

It is highly unlikely that the KLCI would be able to touch its previous high given the massive flood of foreign funds into the market at that time.

But there is still room for the benchmark index to rise further. For a start, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has played all the right cards to regain investor confidence.

Investors love the premier's move to step up efforts, without fear or favour, to remove the mountains of debt at politically well-connected companies.

Favourite son Halim Saad will no longer be shielded by the political establishment and may even be booted out of the highly-indebted Renong-United Engineers Malaysia group.

The government has launched a hostile takeover bid to wrest control of UEM, and possibly Renong, from the beleaguered tycoon. If successful, the government will hive off the group's debts through the sale of assets and the listing of some of its units.

And the government has appointed two young professionals to the helm of Malaysian Resources Corporation Bhd (MRCB) - the media empire closely linked to the dominant political party United Malays National Organisation.

Apart from cleaning up MRCB, the new management is set to revive its two major associates - newspaper publisher The New Straits Times Press and broadcaster Sistem Televisyen Malaysia, better known as TV3.

Other highly-leveraged companies like Lion Group, Johor Corporation, Putra and Star will also come under greater scrutiny.

The cleansing has been long awaited and necessary, but investors must watch out for pitfalls in the restructuring of Malaysia Inc.

Some of the corporate revamps will be protracted and may flop. They may not necessarily translate into higher stock prices for the affected companies in the short term.

For instance, the Corporate Debt Restructuring Committee is now empowered to force shareholders and creditors to accept bigger 'haircuts'. This means that banks will have to take bigger-than-expected losses and won't be able to write back some of the provisions for the soured loans.

In one extreme case, MBf Capital has asked its creditors to forgive a staggering RM1.1 billion (S$506.6 million) out of its total debts of RM1.3 billion. Bankers may have no choice but to take the massive haircut as the company, founded by the late Loy Hean Heong, has accumulated whopping losses of RM2.6 billion.

Shareholders of insolvent companies will have to pay the price as well. Capital reduction exercises will wipe out much of the shareholders' funds. Share prices will fall to reflect the reduced par value and the new capital structure.

Investors should note that not all Malaysian companies can be resuscitated. About 80 companies, or 10 per cent of the number of listed companies, are still struggling to come up with viable restructuring schemes to maintain their listed status.

The most dire case may be Rekapacific, previously controlled by the son of Malaysian Transport Minister Ling Liong Sik. It may become the first company to be booted out of the exchange for failing to turn its fortune around under the stricter listing guidelines. It has not even furnished an annual report since 1997!

Market players should also watch out for restructuring schemes that are overly dependent on the stock market as a solution. Instead of biting the bullet, some companies, encouraged by the relatively buoyant stock market now, may attempt to issue paper to raise funds to get out of debt.

But such schemes may not always succeed. As seen in the past, stock market conditions could change in a matter of months after restructuring schemes are drawn up.

Despite the hazards of investing in troubled firms, debt revamps are absolutely necessary to put companies on a firmer footing. Past excesses will hold back the rising stocks unless the debts of Malaysia Inc are purged.

http://www.iht.com/articles/29801.htm

Economic Whiplash: Slump Has No Borders

Joseph Kahn and Edmund L. Andrews New York Times Service

Monday, August 20, 2001

With Europe and Asia Stagnating, No Region Is Expected to Replace U.S. as Growth Engine

WASHINGTON The world economy, which grew at a raging pace just last year, has slowed to a crawl as the United States, Europe, Japan and some major developing countries undergo a rare simultaneous slump.

The latest economic statistics from around the globe show that many regional economic powers - Italy and Germany, Mexico and Brazil, Japan and Singapore - have become economically stagnant or have fallen into recession, defying many economists' expectations that growth in other countries would help compensate for the slowdown in the United States.

The $33 trillion world economy is still likely to expand this year, as it has every year since the Great Depression. Of the top economies, only Japan's total output seems likely to shrink, and even bearish forecasters say they expect the world to grow at about a 2 percent rate, a bit faster than during international slumps in 1982 and 1991.

Still, many experts say the world is experiencing economic whiplash, with growth rates retreating more quickly and in more of the leading economies than at any time since the oil shock of 1973.

And this time, there is no single outside factor to account for the widespread weakness, persuading some economists that recovery may be slow in coming.

"We have gone from boom to bust faster than anytime since the oil shock," said Stephen Roach, chief economist of Morgan Stanley. "When you screech to a halt like that, it feels like getting thrown through the windshield."

The biggest surprise is the sluggish performance in Europe, especially Germany, where leaders had until recently thought they could escape the American slowdown.

The German economy, Europe's largest, came to a standstill in the second quarter of this year. Italy and the Netherlands are showing practically no growth. And France's relatively frothy economy has slowed sharply as both consumers and businesses cut back on spending.

The result is that Europe, with a combined economy about as big as that of the United States, is in no position to fill in for the United States as a locomotive of world economic growth.

"On balance, I'd say that the likelihood of continued difficulties here and abroad is higher than the prevailing view of most economists," said Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary who is now a co-chairman of Citigroup.

R. Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, says the slowdown among America's peers is worrying, especially Japan's troubles, which he called "quite severe."

But he also said that the reasons for weakness were idiosyncratic, varying from place to place, and that there was no reason to expect that international problems would drag the United States or Europe into recession.

"It might feel like a recession in some places," he said, "but I don't see an outright recession here or in Europe."

Not long ago the United States hoped to have more help. European policymakers confidently predicted in the spring that the region would grow at about its long-term potential rate of 2.5 percent. But many forecasters now predict that it will be less than 2 percent this year - not much better than the United States.

European leaders also acted as if they were certain their new common currency and the growing economic integration of Europe made the region more independent and less vulnerable to outside economic turbulence.

But they were blindsided by problems at home. European demand for consumer goods and industrial machinery throughout the region is so tepid that it offers no source of growth at all.

European companies seem persuaded that the real future growth markets are not at home but in the United States, Asia and Central Europe, so domestic investment has lagged.

What is striking about Europe's slowdown is that so much of it is linked to internal weakness - what Daniel Gros of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels describes as long-term "speed limits" on European growth.

Exports are running still slightly ahead of last year, which was one of spectacular growth. Yet consumers at home are clutching their pocketbooks.

BMW's worldwide sales were up 9.7 percent in the first half of this year, but up only 1.1 percent in Germany. LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the French luxury goods producer, reported that sales of its VSOP Cognac surged 25 percent in the United States in the first half of this year, faster than in Europe.

"Europe's slowdown has very little to do with the United States," Mr. Gros said.

Higher energy and food prices are a big problem for the region. But Thomas Mayer, a senior economist at Goldman Sachs in Frankfurt, says price shocks are only part of Europe's woes.

He also faults the unwillingness of political leaders to liberalize the labor markets and give employers more freedom in hiring and firing. France and Germany recently have taken steps to bolster the power of unions and make it more difficult to lay off workers.

"That is the sort of thing we should especially try to avoid right now," Mr. Mayer said.

In Latin America, Mexico has been in recession since April, with its economy shrinking for the third straight quarter. Brazil, the largest Latin American economy, has suffered soaring interest rates and a persistent energy crisis. Argentina is seeking further International Monetary Fund aid to support its crumbling economy.

The situation in Asia looks no better. Singapore has tumbled into a severe recession that some economists say is the worst the island country has suffered in at least 15 years. Japan once again has slipped into recession territory as its government battles stubborn deflation.

Nearly every other major economy in the region, with the notable exception of China's, has seen growth plunge despite six months of interest rate cuts.

There are at least two schools of thought suggesting that a more problematic and longer-lasting slump than usual is under way.

The first is the worry that widespread malaise is the flip side of the record-setting U.S.-led expansion of the 1990s. Greater world integration in trade, finance and technology fueled the expansion.

But increased interdependence trade now accounts for about a quarter of world output, double its share 25 years ago, and that means much of the world can move down in tandem just as it moved up together, some economists say.

"This is the first recession in the modern era of globalization," said Mr. Roach of Morgan Stanley. Most of the top industrial economies have similar woes, he said, due mainly to the collapse of the boom in technology spending in both the United States and Europe. That collapse has hurt corporate profits and investment returns.

And without steady earnings from foreign subsidiaries, it may take companies considerably longer to overcome the slump.

"The bubble we had in this country was really a global bubble," Mr. Roach said. "Now it has popped."

Mr. Rubin also said that economic interdependence may have greased the spread of the American downturn. But he added that the world would be better off today if countries, especially in Europe, had done more rather than less to liberalize and integrate their economies.

He said the combined weakness of most of the biggest economies presented a challenge to policy makers. The United States and other leading countries need to energetically defend free trade, fiscal discipline and the spread of technology, he said, or risk a backlash that could cloud long-term prospects.

"The U.S., even more than usual, must exercise leadership," Mr. Rubin said. "Without that we may not have a continuation of these forces of changes and that would have a lasting adverse impact."

Another prevalent concern, popular among conservative commentators, is that policy mistakes have caused investors to lose faith in many individual currencies, undermining confidence broadly. This is particularly true in emerging markets like Turkey and Brazil, both of which recently borrowed money from the International Monetary Fund to help protect their currencies.

But these economists also fault central bankers in the United States, Japan and Europe for failing to keep their currencies stable. The dollar, they say, has been too strong, while the euro and yen have been too weak.

David Malpass, formerly an economics official in the back-to-back Reagan and Bush administrations and now a managing director with Bear Stearns in New York, says that weak currencies and falling commodity prices worldwide are an insidious threat to growth that central bankers have failed to counter.

Consumer prices have been falling in Japan for some time and they have recently begun falling in some especially open economies, like Hong Kong.

While they are rising modestly in the United States and Europe, corporate profits and equity values have sagged, which has a deflating effect on business and consumer sentiment, Mr. Malpass says.