David Webb on BFM radio

Two days ago David Webb was interviewed on BFM radio, the link can be found here.

I strongly recommend to listen to the whole interview, but here are some pointers:

• Left his banking career in Hong Kong in 1998 when the markets were bombed down, lots of value; also wanted to give back to society by starting the website
• There is a clear conflict of interest when an exchange is listed between the commercial and regulatory departments, in Hong Kong's case the HKEX (Bursa); the other regulator is SFC (SC), from time to time these parties collide; the regulatory function should be taken out of the commercial entity HKEX
• There should be consolidation of the many regulatory bodies into one, dealing with customers/consumers
• In many ways Malaysia is well regulated compared to Hong Kong
• HKEX, the majority of the directors chosen by government
• When Webb was director, information was withheld, so Webb resigned as director
• HK still has no quarterly reporting, one of the rare Asian countries
• There is too much influence by the tycoons, also regarding rules for insider dealing
• IPO's: there is no class action system, court cases are only worth it if somebody has a large investment
• Independent directors, if approved by controlling shareholders then they are not independent, merely rubberstamps; they should be chosen by the non-controlling shareholders
• There is a clear conflict of interest when a government is investing in companies
• The government should not be involved with private ownership
• 1 share = 1 vote, poll voting and publishing of the results should be the norm
• Family controlled companies: minority investors' money is wanted but companies don't want to be accountable to them
• RPT's: there should be an adequate explanation regarding the reason, why not from other sources, why no tender, why exactly from the controlling shareholder
• Webb is investing in under-valued (under-researched) small caps in HK with a Corporate Governance filter
• Manages his own funds for over 18 years, has hugely outperformance the HK index, enjoys not having to be accountable to others
• Holding period more than 5 years on average