Salaried taxi drivers in Singapore. Will it work?

Oct 10, 13 Salaried taxi drivers in Singapore. Will it work?

Posted by in Interesting articles, Musings

I was reading an article in the newspapers about “Raising surcharges won’t make cabbies drive longer” and it set my mind thinking. The crux of the article is that raising surcharge will not make taxi drivers drive longer, simply because they may not be incentivised primarily by money. Taxi drivers in Singapore are typically self employed. That is, they rent a vehicle from the taxi company for a fixed cost. Then it’s up to them how hard working they want to be. Most of the time though, taxi drivers in Singapore tend to take a flexible approach to their work. If family matters come first, they will prioritise that. Currently, there are already surcharges implemented through various means. Location based surcharge to encourage taxi drivers to go to a certain region/location. Time based surcharge to encourage drivers to be more active during peak hiring hours. Even then, these are implemented in various mechanisms such as peak hour surcharge, midnight surcharge, etc. Often, when a taxi driver hits his profit target for the day, they will tend to take it easy. Maybe enjoy a coffee with some friends, or run personal errands with the taxi. In a personal/individual basis, it might make sense. But on a system basis, it degrades the reliability and service quality of the public transport system. Let’s not forget taxi is a form of public transport. The Land Transport Authority has recently mandated that 70% of a taxi fleet must cover 250km in a day. Even so, it is not likely to solve anything, but it adds more frustration into the system. 250km is simply 83km/h for 3 hours. I would imagine a typical active driver would cover more than that. But what it does is make ‘self employed’ people feel restricted on principle. So what next? A mandate of 500km? 750km? In the article, the writer suggested having drivers with fixed salary and bonuses for good performances. Pondering about it, it actually sounds like a good idea! Of course, the idea...

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Why Gen Y yuppies are unhappy

Sep 16, 13 Why Gen Y yuppies are unhappy

Posted by in Interesting articles, Musings

I recently came across a pretty interesting article and it definitely resonates with me.. In short, it was about why we see so much unhappiness and social unrest in the last few years. In the beginning, he talks about happiness. Happiness = Reality – Expectation   That’s one of the most amazing way of describing happiness I’ve seen! Essentially, it just means if what you get in life, is more than what you expect, you are generally happy. He gave quite a bit of analogy and context after that, but the short story is, as above. Happiness = Reality – Expectation. He later goes on to talk about the 3 facts about the Gen Y GYPSY. That they are wildly ambitious, delusional, and constantly taunted. How true! In the current generation, our parents have worked hard and attained decent success. As such, a lot of parents tell their kids that they are special, and that they should pursue their passion, etc. This gives a false sense of idealism and that the world is all rosy. To top it off, social media has made it easy for people to share their ideal self. Every week, you would see someone partying, or someone flying off for a holiday, or someone buying a new car/house. People tend to present the best of themselves publicly, and we consume all these in envy. All these adds up to raise our own expectation. Do read the whole article here. To me, the last advice is the best. Ignore everyone else. Other people’s grass seeming greener is no new concept, but in today’s image crafting world, other people’s grass looks like a glorious meadow. The truth is that everyone else is just as indecisive, self-doubting, and frustrated as you are, and if you just do your thing, you’ll never have any reason to envy...

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Kishore Buxani: A Passion for Real Estate

Feb 01, 13 Kishore Buxani: A Passion for Real Estate

Posted by in Interesting articles

First printed in Business Times, 12 Jan 2013 A passion for real estate Kishore Buxani, who heads the Buxani Group, has a nose for sniffing out undervalued assets, reports Kalpana Rashiwala Kishore Buxani had a headstart in the real estate business. When he was 12, he and his elder brother Haresh started ploughing through the classified ads to help their mother find a home for the family. One apartment in Meyer Road – a 1,250 sq ft unit with 999-year leasehold tenure – caught their eye. “When we finally bought it in 1986, it was at $165,000. But I remember having looked at it earlier in 1983, when it was $380,000,” says the 40-year-old, who heads the Buxani Group. His early experience and the skills he later gained at Goldman Sachs helped to hone his real estate investing strategy. He concentrates on what he understands best, that is, Singapore commercial real estate, seeking undervalued properties, adding value to them, and holding them for the long term. Market watchers say making shrewd property investments is a family trait for Mr Buxani. His mother, Indra, is a sister of Royal Brothers founders Raj and Asok Kumar Hiranandani – although Buxani Group is fully owned by Mr Buxani and not linked to his uncles. Mr Buxani has a nose for sniffing out undervalued assets. “We look for well-located older properties below replacement cost and which are under-performing, under-rented, under-used, and under-appreciated.” Part two of this strategy involves value-addition. “We actively manage the asset post-acquisition through refurbishment, repositioning or tenant remixing.” Founded in 2003, Buxani Group owns Katong Junction, a stake in Finexis Building in Robinson Road, four floors in Samsung Hub, and strata office units in Parkway Centre. Its partner in these four investments is a group of offshore investors advised by Seychelles-based Capital Management Group (CMG). Apart from these joint investments with CMG, Buxani Group owns more than 10 shophouses in Chinatown and Little India along with strata offices at International Plaza and Malacca Centre, and...

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Singapore sits moodily atop wealth pole

Dec 29, 11 Singapore sits moodily atop wealth pole

Posted by in Interesting articles

Haven’t posted anything for quite a while, but this is worth keeping. Sunday, Dec 25, 2011 The Business Times Last month, if Singapore had been a person, it would have stood above the unwashed tableau of Occupy Wall Street (OWS), watching from its penthouse and laughing into its cognac. But it has spent the year being a little down in the mouth, preoccupied with property prices, taxi fares and faulty trains. This gloom is hard to explain in the grander scheme of things. When OWS’s gross simplification of the one per cent trampling on the 99 per cent is contemplated, Singapore is practically part of the world’s one per cent. This is a country where, every single day, 25 people bought either a Mercedes-Benz or a BMW for the first 11 months of the year.  In the same period, every four days, someone drove away from the Ferrari showroom with a big smile on his face. (One assumes that, each time, it’s a different person.) When it comes down to it, Singapore can be almost as Wall Street as Wall Street. Last year, 8.5 per cent of New York City’s workforce was on the payroll of the finance and insurance industries. Singapore had about 6.4 per cent of its resident population on it, while Hong Kong had 6 per cent. If a demonstrator with anti-banking invective to expend were to imagine the two as corporate entities – which is not hard – he would therefore be more inclined to picket Singapore than Hong Kong. “One per cent” might be a dirty term these days, but would-be picketers here have to be careful about calling others names that might apply to themselves. On a per-adult basis, Singapore has the sixth highest net wealth in the world: a mean value of US$284,692, according to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2011. “Net wealth” here is defined by a person’s financial and real estate assets minus debt. The mean value, however, gets short shrift from experts, since...

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Banker, empire builder: The story of Mr Mochtar Riady

Oct 11, 11 Banker, empire builder: The story of Mr Mochtar Riady

Posted by in Interesting articles

Quite a good read! Very apt since I am moving into the industry. Originally appeared in The Business Times, 8October 2011 Indonesian tycoon Mochtar Riady looks back on a lifetime filled with adventure and accomplishment. By Vikram Khanna IN his prepared remarks for a talk at NUS Business School (of which he is a major benefactor), Indonesian tycoon Mochtar Riady, quoted the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu to sum up his management philosophy: ‘Trees that fill our embrace emerge from small sprouts, and a thousand mile journey always starts with the first step … Plan for the difficult while things are easy, and act on the great while it is still small.’ Mr Riady started small and went on to build a pan-Asian business empire with some US$11 billion worth of assets, spanning financial services, property, retail, information technology, natural resources and healthcare. But he is first and foremost, by instinct and by passion, a banker. ‘I went into other areas only by chance,’ he says. Banking was an ambition he harboured since he was a schoolboy. Speaking in Mandarin through an interpreter – though later he breaks into English – he recounts this childhood memory: ‘When I was in primary school in Indonesia, I had to pass a big building on my way from home to school. I always thought, oh, this building is so impressive and the people who work there look so elegant. But I don’t know that they do.’ ‘When I graduated from school, I was already thinking about being a banker. My father said, you are unrealistic. The banking business is a rich man’s business, how can you do it? My answer was, the bank’s commodity is not money, it is trust. As long as I can have people’s trust, I can be a banker.’ ‘So I asked my teacher about the building. He said it is a bank. I asked, what is a bank? He said, a bank lends people money and makes money from that. And I thought, maybe one...

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