Business
Phuket Finance: No fund is risk free… but

PHUKET: I recently began using a very interesting fund with retirees who need a steady income called Lavaux Capital, which is run out of the very well-regulated jurisdiction of Switzerland.
The managers have all been involved in trade finance for many years and basically specialize in bridge financing backed by insurance contracts. The fund pays 8% simple interest in quarterly distributions or you can take additional units so that the holding accumulates at something like an 8.25% compound rate.
This investment is totally uncorrelated to stock markets and does not rely on derivatives or things difficult for the average person to understand.
You may have noticed a trend in several of the funds I have written about in the last year.
That trend is short-term lending, backed by insurance contracts. There is a very big distinction between these kinds of funds and others in what is called the “asset-backed lending” space.
Many lending funds went horribly wrong in the credit crunch due to a combination of reasons.
One, is that the underlying assets were illiquid, such as property.
Another, is that when people all try to redeem at the same time, it is usually the worst possible environment to dump the assets needed to raise cash for redemption. As such, investors take a walloping.
The maximum term a loan made by Lavaux Capital will ever has is 120 days, whereas, most are 90 days or less. This fund manages its own liquidity by only allowing redemptions on a quarterly notice. Thus liquidity is essentially perfectly matched.
Even if all of the investors redeemed simultaneously, the loans would all come due at about the same time as the redemptions, and then a gate wouldn’t even need to be put up.
With other short-term asset backed lending funds, the gate would likely be very short term.
A fund where the asset backing the loans is property on the other hand, would have a serious predicament on its hands, and investors could either take a huge blow to their capital base or be stuck waiting nervously for years for their redemption proceeds.
Of course there is no such thing as “risk free”.
This fund has not been in existence for very long and thus there could be unforeseen problems.
The only way I can see it going wrong, short of fraud, is if all of their clients went bust at the same time, and then the major insurance companies such as Zürich would also go bust.
This would likely be the kind of Armageddon scenario where I think we’d be more worried about surviving the war than how our investments were doing.
It has been difficult to find safe yields for investors since the credit crunch, but a number of funds such as this have been stepping up and filling several needs at once.
Businesses need credit to survive and be able to trade; retirees need fixed income without worrying about market fluctuations; and insurance companies are in the business of taking on default risk for a price.
Lavaux Capital brings these things together very nicely.
David Mayes MBA lives in Phuket and provides wealth management services to expats around the globe, focusing on UK pension transfers. He can be reached at 085-335-8573 or david.m@faramond.com.
— 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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