Business
Ensure fiduciary duty – Phuket Finance

PHUKET: Fiduciary duty basically means that an agent is meant to act in the best interest of his client, and not his own. It is a very simple concept, yet not surprisingly, the real world all too often does not work this way.
When it comes down to it, human beings very often fall victim to greed. If I told most people how many times I have been blatantly lied to by fund managers and their promoters, most people would stay away from the financial markets all together.
Unfortunately, they would then fall victim to inflation which may have a far worse impact on their long term financial well-being.
You would also have had to have spent the last decade in a vacuum to believe that a publicly traded company’s financial statements aren’t easily manipulated to hide an imminent bankruptcy. Do a quick search on Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers or Enron if you need a refresher.
You don’t need to despair though, as there are in fact ways to align a money manager’s interests with those of yourself. This ensures fiduciary duty is followed without relying on the moral fiber of those entrusted with your money. Unfortunately, it doesn’t eliminate human error, but sadly there are no guarantees in life. You could get hit by a bus tomorrow, especially if you venture out onto Phuket’s roads. Diversification can help with this.
There have been many structures and regulations tried over the years and decades to try and solve what is called the principal agent problem. Unfortunately, attempting to regulate morality has never worked very well, but it has managed to make fraudsters get much more creative. The most common historical breach of fiduciary duty on Wall Street has been churning accounts, where brokers made per-trade commissions and thus overtraded at the clients’ expense, to pad their own pockets. Fixed annual management charges as a percentage of an account’s value, have reduced the practice of churning, but have opened the door for a separate problem.
Since the manager can continue to make money even if the client gets a negative return, many will make opposite calls for separate accounts since they are guaranteed to keep some happy clients. I think this practice is absolutely despicable, and the most famous cases of this involved investment letters.
Firms would fax out recommendations for highly volatile stocks to a large database with opposite recommendations (think of telling half to put their money on red and the other half on black at roulette), and since each time they would be right on 50%, eventually they would whittle their list of prospects down to a small amount of people, but they would have an amazingly impressive 100% track record with these few. I remember my father getting these faxed to him all the time when I was growing up and him checking up on them, luckily we always seemed to be in the loser group and he never became a victim of the ploy.
Incentive fees attempt to fix this problem, since a manager who charges an incentive fee (usually 10-20% of profits) will earn a lot more by making you positive returns. This is great in theory and I generally only like to use funds where the manager earns an incentive fee and also for another reason. It proves that the manager believes in himself. If you believed you could make positive returns and were setting up a fund, would you not set it up in a way to earn yourself the most money? A fund manager who does not have an incentive fee in my opinion does not believe in his ability and will thus only take a fixed management fee.
David Mayes MBA resides in Phuket and provides wealth management services to expats around the globe, focusing on UK pension transfers. Email david.m@faramond.com or call 085-335-8573.
— David Mayes
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Thailand
Facebook removes “information-influencing” pages linked to Thai military

Facebook has confirmed the removal of 185 accounts run by the Thai military and allegedly involved in information-influencing. The social media giant says the accounts were deleted for engaging in what it calls, “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”. In total, 77 accounts, 72 pages, and 18 groups have been removed from the platform, in addition to 18 Instagram accounts. It’s the first time Facebook has taken such action against accounts linked to the Thai government.
The accounts were associated with the Thai military and were targeting people in the southern provinces, Facebook said its regular report on coordinated inauthentic behavior. The south of the country has been the scene of decades-long conflict, with insurgent groups in the majority-Muslim, Malay-speaking region calling for independence. To date, around 7,000 people have died in the ongoing struggle.
Facebook says the deleted accounts were most active last year and used both fake and real accounts to manage pages and groups, both openly military pages and pages that hid their links to the military. Some of the fake profiles pretended to be people from the southern provinces.
The report mentioned a post by the now-removed account named “comprehending the operation” in Thai. The page posted the logo for Amnesty International Thailand and wrote “The NGO never cares about ordinary citizens because they have no role in society. Normal people are not famous. Any case is not big news. They are not worth the investment of foreigners so they will not do anything to help. This is why we don’t see anything from the NGO.”

Image overlay translates to “The NGO never cares about ordinary citizens because they have no role nor money.”
On another now-removed account, named “truth about my home Pattani” in Thai, a post said “Muslim leader declares southern border is a peace zone. The southern separatists started a movement by spreading the idea that Thailand is under control by different believers so that people would come and fight for their religion. This was declared that the action clearly violates Islam faith.”

Image overlay translates to “Southern border is not Jihad zone.”
When contacted by Reuters, the military had no comment on the removal of the Facebook accounts, with a spokesman saying the organisation does not comment outside of official press conferences.
The head of Cybersecurity Policy at Facebook, Nathaniel Gleicher, has confirmed the reasons behind the platform’s decision.
“This is the first time that we’ve attributed one of our takedowns to links to the Thai military. We found clear links between this operation and the Internal Security Operations Command. We can see that all of these accounts and groups are tied together as part of this operation.”
He adds that the accounts had spent around US$350 on advertising on both Facebook and Instagram. One or more of the pages had about 700,000 followers and at least one of the groups had 100,000 members. Gleicher says the accounts were removed because of their misleading behaviour and not because of the content being posted. The content included support for the military and the monarchy, with allegations of violence and criticism of insurgent groups in the south.
It’s not the first time accounts linked to the Thai military have been removed by a social media platform. In October, Twitter removed 926 accounts it says had links to the army and posted pro-military and pro-government content. The Thai army has denied any involvement with the accounts in question. In November, Twitter also suspended an account posting pro-monarchy content that was found to have links to the palace and to thousands of other accounts posting similar content.
To read the February 2021 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report, click HERE.
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Central Thailand
Airline executive arrested for failure to pay wages of 150 workers

An airline executive has been arrested in the central province of Samut Songkhram, after complaints from150 employees that they had not been paid. Chawengsak Noiprasan, who had a court warrant issued against him in October, was taken to Don Muang police station from a property in the Bang Khan Take sub-district. He is a board member of Siam Air Transport.
The airline began operations in October 2014 with services out of Don Mueang to Hong Kong, using 2 Boeing 737-300s. 2 Boeing 737-800s were added to its fleet in late 2015. It expanded by adding Zhengzhou and Guangzhou in China to its network in early 2015. In late 2015, the airline launched flights to Macau and Singapore. In 2017, the airline ceased all operations.
But according to an article in the Bangkok Post, the carrier operates a number of scheduled and charter flights from Bangkok’s Don Mueang Airport. The Post reports that, as Chawengsak signs the company’s legal paperwork, all legal matters concerning the airline fall to him.
The Metropolitan Police Bureau says the executive has admitted to ignoring a 30 day notice issued by the labour inspector and ordering the payment of wages to 150 workers. It’s understood he is also wanted in relation to 7 other cases.
The authorities sought Chawengsak’s arrest following complaints from employees who say they haven’t received their wages for 2 months. It’s understood the airline had previously deferred salary payments for over 8 months. 150 workers filed an official complaint with Don Mueang police and also approached media outlets, asking them to pressure the airline into paying the money owed.
SOURCE: Bangkok Post
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Business
Governments & old media versus social media – who will win? | VIDEO

We look at the recent changes made by the Australian and Indian governments to except control over the world’s biggest social media platforms. India has issued strict new rules for Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms just weeks after the Indian government attempted to pressure Twitter to take down social media accounts it deemed, well, anti social. There is now an open battle between the rise of social media platforms and the governments and ‘old’ media that have been able to maintain a certain level of control over the ‘message’ for the last century. Who will win?
The rules require any social media company to create three roles within India… a “compliance officer” who ensures they follow local laws; a “grievance officer” who addresses complaints from Indian social media users; and a “contact person” who can actually be contacted by lawyers and other aggrieved Indian parties… 24/7.
The democratisation of the news model, with social media as its catalyst, will continue to baffle traditional media and governments who used to enjoy a level of control over what stories get told. The battles of Google and Facebook, with the governments of India and Australia will be followed in plenty of other countries as well.
At the root of all discussions will be the difference between what governments THINK social media is all about and the reality about how quickly the media landscape has changed. You’ll get to read about it first, on a social media platform… probably on the screen you’re watching this news story right now.
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