Monday, February 13, 2012

Warren Buffett Won't Invest in S'pore Inc

When reading investment books one invariably come across a section somewhat late in the investment process regarding executive pay. It caution the investor on whether the executives running the company has the shareholders interest at heart or just simply interested in fattening his own pockets.

- find out online how much the companies' executives are paid
- Compare the pay with a few other companies in the industry

If the businesses make roughly the same amount of $$ & industry is same then the pay is comparable. If a CEO's pay isn't in line with others by a wide margin then you might have found a company that isn't putting its shareholder interests first. Huge paychecks are just 1 symptom of questionable management.

Substitute companies with other 1st world govts & industry with other 1st world nations.

Does this ring a bell especially to S'poreans? Even after salaries downward adjustment the pay is still ridiculous. If S'pore is a 'company' which some people already say is S'pore Inc then Buffett won't touch this dubious company as the executive package already fail his criteria of honest management miserably.

2 comments:

  1. Can't agree more. This is a great article. If u look at hong kong, their chief exec is paid so much less (4 times) but their GDP per capita ($30.4k) is ranked 35th in the world (wolfram alpha) compared to Singapore of $37k. The ratios doesn't justify. If these were companies, I'd continue to place my bets with Hong Kong. They didn't need casinos to drive up their GDP figures unlike Singapore depending on trading and finance as their main economic drivers.

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    1. You are generous using HK example. If i'm not mistaken HK's chief is 2nd highest paid, however HK is part of China. If we compare our tiny dot with other countries the gap is even worse & absurb.

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