Lehman mini-notes/DBS Hi-Notes/Merrill Jubilee notes 2 comments

This is not the first time people have complained about mis-selling by irresponsible financial advisers at various financial institutions. In 2004 when CAO collapsed there was also an uproar over the Rainbow equity-linked notes issued by DBS whose return was apparently linked to the WORST return from ANY stock within a contract-specified basket. Heads I win and tails you lose --- that's how overly-complex structured notes work. The target audience, it has turned out, appears to be the elderly who look to put their money in fixed deposits but end up being persuaded to buy structured notes which are "capital-protected". Now if post-mortem newspaper analysis reports had not enlightened me on the difference between "capital-protected" and "capital-guaranteed" I would have thought they were synonymous.

Anyway, those affected and feeling aggrieved because they felt they had been victims of predatory misrepresentation should really find legal means to redress the issue. Tan Kin Lian, ex-NTUC Income CEO, has been helping to do the legwork to find means of bringing the case up on behalf of affected investors through appropriate means, and his bloglink is below. Please forward the link to those of your relatives/friends who might be interested.

Tan Kin Lian's blog