Quoted out of context twice?

my thursday's dinner

On Tuesday this week, MayBank Singapore slashed its three-year fixed home loan rates from 3.58% for all three years to 1.68% for the first year, 2.68% for the second and 3.38% for the third year. The new first-year interest rate is about 40% lower than similar packages being offered in the market.

Guess what was the headline on Friday's BT...

"Maybank's home loan promotion creates a buzz
Other banks won't get into price war, says OCBC's chief executive."

A couple of questions come to my mind when I saw that.
Has the editing process misquoted Mr Conner ie. quoted out of context?
For otherwise, can he speak on behalf of other banks? I am sure he was not trying to suggest that there is some sort of collective agreement with other banks not to cut rates.

Another incident of Mr Conner being quoted out of context was highlighted on Saturday's BT.

The letter by OCBC PR entitled "OCBC chief was speaking in jest" attempts to clarify Mr Conner's response when asked by a journalist at OCBC Bank's 2007 final results briefing what Mr Conner thought of DBS's incoming chief executive Richard Stanley.

Mr Conner responded in jest and said, 'You mean since I trained him?', drawing laughter from the audience. The quote in the article had implied that Mr Conner said 'I trained him' in a definitive manner.

Moral of the story - Beware of the danger of being quoted out of context when one speaks as a public figure.

Damn if you don't do,...

On the 13 Feb 2008, I read from BT that a group of shareholders has sued Yahoo! Inc asking a judge to force the owner of the world's second-biggest Internet search engine company to fully consider takeover offers after it rejected a US$44.6 billion bid by Microsoft Corp.

So what if Yahoo! Board had accepted the offer, would any other shareholders had sued them for having accepted a too low an offer without thoroughly considering alternative means of enhancing shareholders' value?

Amazing SIA

my sanctuary

The headline in BT today said "SIA posts $590m Q3 net profit". Well this is about the same as corresponding quarterly profit last year. So no big deal right?

It is BIG deal as I read further down the report.

Striping out the one-time gains from disposals of SIA Building and its stake in Singapore Aircraft Leasing Enterprise in its last year's reported profit of $1.46 billion for the corresponding 3 quarters, net profit attributable to shareholders is 46.8% or $485 million HIGHER for the 3 quarters to date!!!!

The fantastic results have been achieved against the background of high fuel prices and the continued strengthening of SGD.

Aggresive management of its fuels costs through hedging and fuel surchages applied on its 4.96 million passengers, has kept its escalation to only 8% in the 3rd quarter.

Passenger yield grew by 12.7% vs a 7.7% rise in unit cost. I wonder whether the higher yield is due to efficiency improvement or ticket price increase.

Passenger load factor is now at 81.3% vs a breakeven level of 67.7%.

My sincere appreciation of your effort and the brain work involved in achieving the results.

P/S - Dear SIA, can you waive the fuel surcharge please? :)