Found a good paper through recommendation of FullerMoney on the capital extraction within recent times. This, compared to previous years where saving rates were higher shows that people now might bet on their assets appreciating and thus drawing future revenue from these fixed assets? The article is availble here: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2006/wp06162.pdf

 

I'm not quite sure if this holds for Asia, geographically the region with far higher saving rates than the rest of the world and an extremly fast growing property market. If the transactions meet the global (western) levels of property trade then they are certainly in a far stronger position, holding not only real assets but real cash. This would make the region financially strong (because of savings) to withstand any economic downturns. Obviously, market overreaction and herd mentality still play a game, yet fundamentally stronger. Compared to American (or even Canadian) conditions in which credit is used to finance many of the day-to-day expenses (using HWE) seemingly makes them vulnerable to any collaps or recession.

 

My 2 cents.

Found my way around, stumbled across the Hong Kong Flower show...cute, different. Thousands of ppl all anxiously taking pictures of imported and exotic flowers. Didnt think it my thing though fun to watch the grrls pose, the guys fiddle with their extremely sophisticated cameras and old people just wonder around. A beautiful scene though on the Island with the montains and buildings of Central in the background.

Arrived in Hong Kong now, had to check out of Lanson Place as I was unable to give them a definite indication of how much longer I'll be staying. I guess its back to living out of a suite case for a while.

 

Got a great flight in, United Airlines at SGD444 for a 5:55am flight which brought me to the Cosmopolitan Hotel at 10:30am. Quite nakked though after havnig to pack my accumulated junk till 2am, leaving 1:45 hours for rest and a short 3 hour flight for sleep. Nothing to complain about, its HK afterall.

 

Only here for two days, meeting with Steven from GL Trade to discuss some buy side screens, integration architecture and pre trade validation. Should be good, since we both met at Loof last year and had some personal contact since then (dinner, partying, drinking =). This time it is business though and perhaps we can work on a suitable model for large scale deployed DMA enabled screens.

 

Phoned Tim to see if he was in town or could direct me to a good quality local eatery. Might only get together on Tuesday as noted that he was on a golf course in Taipei. Lets see if there is chance.

the recent situation that I am finding myself in is somewhat fortunate, frustrating and inconvenient. the project is overrunning and obviously quite delayed yet we keep hope believing that we are only 10m from the finishing line. the technology components are complete and confirmed functional by the client, but process issues keep on stalling the launch.

 

interesting that Peter Druker had such extreme views on organisations and measurable performance of individual workers, something that he believed would make organisations more efficient. this is achieved through structure and hierarchy which gives each individual a unique (or set of unique) functions. it is up to them to give their best effort in ensuring these are met diligently, after which output can be quanitified and the individual promoted (or demoted).

 

Here in Singapore I can see just that. A structured organisation where individuals have tasks that need to be completed by x time, in y sequence and z result. This works well only if you have a corporation and a culture that strongly believes in these principles. Contrasting my grass roots level experiences with those at Global Trader, it becomes clear why modern business management theories strongly agree Drukers viwes. However, take a high growth, shooting star SME company and try model it into the quantified, structured corporate approach. At the tmie of this writing, it seems impossible to get a small team of people (+-50) to work effectively through process. The growing company, unless perhaps strictly mandated from day one, has too many areas to cover and often requires individuals to spread themselves quite thin. They perform the functions of two or three people in corporates, often seek shortcuts to automate or only achieve half the desired result. There is no real solution for them since this company is experiencing high growth and every individual is working on best effort. The financial director covers as the HR manager, the support guys become system experts, the admin department tends to client queries, and customer services deals with technical issues??? Apply this to a company with 100+ staff and the picture changes completely.

 

The challenge lies in 1) bringing the SME to adopt a process culture, 2) enforcing process as an optimisation and not as a control (ie procedure as opposed to change control) and 3) redistributing the work in such a manner that previously multitasking individuals become delegators (and no longer act as do'ers).

 

Personally, I would like to try realise a process culture and would try this in two ways: 1) start the process awareness at an early stage and 2) clearly assign ownership over processes to individuals (failing which there will be recourse for them not managing the process).

 

Obviously easier said than done, but there are a few tricks to this. Process does not have to be documented initially, it can simply be created. Another motivator is to manage processes by exception ie only report irregularities. Lastely, I would encourage automation whereever possible one a process has been successfully adoped as part of the working procedures. This, effectively, is to incentivise staff to develop a process and clearly start to understand the inputs, actions and outputs; forming a basis from which an automated process can be developed. There is no need to jump this stage as the automated process will not bear the same weight in value as compard to an existing proces.

 

Returning to my opening paragraph, my stay continues on a very short term perpetual basis leaving me somewhere between i-dont-know and maybe-another-week. perhaps a near future discussion will push us to the finish line and allow me to launch CFDs here in Singapore this month.