Agree with you darkness. How did they get it so wrong?

Coming to think of it how did the Bio tech push get it so wrong.

What abt MTI?

What abt Shozou?

What abt Shin Corp?

Are we living in the Matrix or did it really happen darkness?

And yet EDB is the largest financial for this company and fork out $19 millions, and sure enough the share price shoot up to 80 cents and down to peanuts few days later !!! And yet when Victor Tan and ACCS get scrutinized, EDB is not being examined !!!! Holy shit, for a gov board to fork out millions of dollars and do not know what the fuck is going on is just plain pretension ! Will you spend taxmoney on a company without the planting and knowing what happened to ACCS’s operation ? My foot !!!

And now this saga happened with NSW happened. Only this time, the AngMoh is more daring and eloquent and willing to admit the whole thing. In ACCS, the gov is been protected to save face. By with outsider, we now know better what happened to EDB !!

“Victor Tan,ACCS’s Founder,
Managing Director and CEO, credits
EDB for fast-tracking the growth of
the company at a critical juncture. In
2001, EDB recognised the potential
of the business and invested S$19
million to fund its expansion.The
capital injection enabled ACCS to
grow at an accelerated rate, from
11 centres across six countries as at
end-2000 to 66 centres across 11
countries just 12 months later.”
from http://www.edb.gov.sg/etc/medialib/downloads/about_edb.Par.0069.File.tmp/page66_accs.pdf

Either case, the EDB just keep bloody mouth shout ! Something fishy is going on !!!

Wakeup Singaporean, we been duped !

My advice to everyone is if you want to drive off the cliff then go and see WANG, bc he has absolutely no idea how to manage a successful business.

The central issue here has nothing to do with the viability of the business. That after all is deduced from the financial projection i.e how many students? What is the optimal fee? Whats the overheads? What are the fixed cost? Whats the working capital? etc. Essentially, its a matter of statistical analysis – no mystery there! So no point looking into that empty box.

The issue here is how did they EDB and UNSW get it so wrong as to miss the mark by the proverbial mile? Over 100%!

This naturally throws out questions was EDB fulfilling its role as a value added partner and facilitator in this entire business venture? After all if the figures were so delusionally unrealistic shouldn’t they have alerted UNSW? Or am I to believe they left the entire market projection to UNSW? If so how could they have been so negligent to authorised such a large investment without first conducting their own feasebility study?

To determine what is the sickness or where it all unravelled. You need to be able to find the root cause. All of you are just commenting on the symptoms.

The question that answers this entire debacle isnt who pulled the plug. That a bit like blaming the night watch man for calling the fire brigade when the building is on fire. Or even why they have decided to jump ship even before they set sail. Obviously, they dont want to drive their car off the cliff, so you cant blame them.

But that still doesnt answer the question: how did they dig such a hole for themselves in the first place?

Go back to the root: how did they derived at their projections? How realistic were the projections? How could they are erred so far off the market reality to suggest their projections were even delusional? Were there any factors that skewered their analysis? If so what were they? And why?

Always go back to the source. Everything has a source. Otherwise all you would be doing is rain dancing.

“The accounts committee said that the Economic Development Board (EDB), the city-state’s powerful economic agency, had shown lapses in its governance structure, financial operations, procurement and accounting systems.

“This was the first audit of the EDB undertaken by the Auditor-General and the audit had given rise to a large number of observations in which the board had not established proper internal control procedures,” the accounts committee said in the report released on Friday.

A sum of S$105 million ($69 million) allocated in the EDB’s 2005/06 budget was not submitted to the EDB’s board for approval, and the board had allowed staff to grant loans and to borrow without reporting that to the board, the report said.”

The local press, as usual, are not giving this report prominence. Hardly surprising. Its a Reuters report which i’ve posted over at my blog if anybody wishes to read it… Public Accounts Committee Finds Lapses Within EDB

if u look @ their report page 13 , seems like the net liabilities is the most @ 3.4 mil , supporting the factor of finance contributing to the pull out from sg

The cost savings, if any, btw the Singapore and the Aussie campuses does not outweigh the benefits of having an established and wider campus experience in UNSW’s Aussie campus, plus the ability to take a lot more courses.

UNSW isn’t UChicago, INSEAD or Tisch… both in terms of quality and locale inconvenience (Australia is only a few hours away, the others are half day journeys at best). It was unfortunately an ill-conceived venture to begin with.

Being a NUS student, I know NUS is a good place to be in, but I feel most ads I see in papers or TV don’t really represent the true picture.

The NUS and SMU media war is more of “shock and awe” and “winning hearts and minds” than anything. They create hype in students’ minds unnecessarily and unfairly, and may have played a role in UNSW Asia’s downfall (in terms of intake nos).

For any business, there is no such thing as risk free. It depends on targets and also change in management or etc.

Doing the numbers, yes, you would expect some losses, but tell me is 300 students so difficult to achieve considering the size of the market.

Further, as noted in the news article, there were no possibility of ratcheting up as noted in the 2nd semester enrolment figures . In this , why should any rational business person continue. Most CEOs or CFOs expect a shortfall of 10%-20% or max 30% but anything above that in a buoyant global economy means the numbers were wrong hence cut loss time unless it is the CEOs or CFOs pet projects.

In China, it is about relationship as much as making money.

I wonder how much money gov has been giving MNC as incentives to make them stay ! And media will make gov think that they are superman despite all the expense incur show otherwise !