Before all of you start jumping to conclusion that I am writing about Mrs. Lee, I am writing about the other Mrs lee. Not the one with the initials KGC but rather the prettiest of all the Mrs. Lee, Wong Ming Yang.
The date is Oct 28[SUP]th[/SUP] 1982, and Mrs Lee Hsien Loong nee Wong Ming Yang has passed away. Many theories abound as to the nature of her death. The Official party line is that she passed away from a heart attack 3 weeks after giving birth. If you believe this, I have some land I want to sell you in Pulau Tekong. This is not likely because she was young, aged 31, when she passed, and 31 year olds just do not have heart attacks. In addition, given that she was giving birth to the future heir apparent, you can bet that she would have been subjected to all sorts of medical care and tests to make sure she was physically ok and had no problems in giving birth. Other theories indicated she committed suicide in a resort hotel in Sentosa. But the interesting thing is no autopsy was performed on her, so I leave that to your imagination to decide. Also, consider the following. Only her corneas were donated to be transplanted to the eyes of a schoolboy from Anderson Secondary School. Her kidneys were supposed to be transplanted but Dr. Kwa (brother of Gecko) said that it was too late. Other organs like the lungs, liver, etc were not even mentioned as transplant candidates. they would not be if she had poisoned herself. All her organs would have been useless for transplant, save the corneas.
Why is her death of such a profound influence on Singapore? The reason is that it altered the succession plans of the Lee family and resulted In the marriage of Lee Hsien Loong to Ho Ching and the horrors that followed that.
Old Man Lee was in a quandary. Around this time, he was finding out that number 2 son Hsien Yang was not interested in the family business at all. He is a carefree happy sort of chap and never took anything seriously. Furthermore, he was disobedient and did not follow papa’s instructions. Eg. He bought a Ferrari when specifically told by Daddy to keep a low profile. As well, he para jumped with the Commandoes when specifically forbidden to take the jump wings course. How could he be entrusted with positions of power and authority and toe the Family line? This was a big blow to the dynastic aspirations of Old Man.
As we know, his other child, Lee Wei Ling, is perfectly happy to remain a doctor and stay out of politics and stay out of running any serious endeavour like a sovereign wealth fund. Of course, if Wong Ming Yang had not died, it’s also highly unlikely she would be in politics or take a substantial role in a GLC or such, by simple virtue she is a doctor by training and profession. In the early 80s the grandchildren were all too young to take on any responsibility in the family business. The loss of Hsien Yang as a potential assistant successor was therefore a big blow.
The situation was solved with the marriage of LHL to Ho Ching. Ho was by all accounts an unorthodox individual. In those days, it was rare for women in Singapore to go into the engineering faculty in NUS. Not only did she do that, she later joined MINDEF as an engineer after graduating from NUS. Women in MINDEF were already a rarity (most being in the clerk or admin areas) and a woman engineer in MINDEF was even rarer. Being a woman, She must have faced a lot of bias and harassment in her initial years at MINDEF, but as everyone knows, she had a thick skin then and has one even till today. She had to be able to play ball with the boys and also be a team player, and hold her own in the face of intimidation and other such hazing. This is evident because she would rise up through the ranks to lead Chartered Industries. She must have been the only SE Asian woman in very male dominated defence and engineering industry. Goh Keng Swee was very impressed by her and by 1980 ended up having her, Su Guaning and Tham Choon Tat assist Philip Yeo to run DSO and the defence related companies. Lets remember that she graduated with an engineering degree from NUS only 4 years earlier in 1976. Quite a meteoric rise for anyone. At this point, she came to the attention of Old Man and Lee HL. The father was looking for a replacement for his wayward son Hsien Yang, and the son was looking for a replacement for his late wife. Both found what they wanted in Ho Ching.
We have to digress here and make a side trip into how Old man Lee really made his money. In the early days of his govt., his monthly salary as a Prime Minister was around $6000 per month. Back then, the superscale system was not even in place. $6000 per month was pittance even for 70s, and his wife was certainly earning a multiple of that. Of course, it can be said that his wife’s money was also his money since they both founded the law firm together. But I am sure Old man Lee did not see it as that. Not many people know, but LKY was a big time stock punter. He was a heavy speculator in the local stock market as well as a stock investor. He was so invested in the stock market that rumours had it he ordered the stock exchange to suspend trading to protect his positions once in the 1970s and once again in 1986 in the midst of the Pan El crisis. An estimated 25 stock broking firms were going to go bankrupt due to the Pan El crisis, one of which was J Ballas, run by his brother Freddie Lee and was the defacto Lee family stock purchasing vehicle.
The marriage of Ho and his son LHL perfectly dovetailed what LKY wanted to do with his stock picking acumen. Not satisfied with just punting in the local stock market, and the limited profits that could bring due to the small size of the local stock market, Old Man had to think global. It’s no surprise that he was also the Chairman of GIC. GIC’s mandate was to invest outside of Singapore. Until Ho was installed to run Temasek, Temasek’s mandate was to invest in the local market and be the holding vehicle for the Govt’s GLC. When Ho was propelled in to be CEO of Temasek, a position for which she was completely unqualified, she changed Temasek’s mandate completely to include international investments. This was on direction of Old Man. Prior to Ho taking over, Temasek was not very aggressive and was run passively by civil servants strictly as a holding company for GLCs. Temask’s fortunes therefore depended on the business acumen of the GLCs it owned. Now, Temasek’s fortune was dependent on the business acumen of Ho, which in retrospect, we know is not very good.
It turns out that Old Man’s stock punting acumen was not really acumen at all but more like insider trading. If you knew what a GIC or what Temasek was going to buy a few weeks or even months before it happened, you could get in on the action before that and buy that particular share and make a tidy profit. Using his brother Freddie’s stockbrokerage J Ballas and Later Vickers Ballas, enabled him to have complete anonymity. After all, his brother is not going to whistle blow on him. How does this work?
Taking a recent example, Olam International. This was a company that Temasek had a minor holdings in. In March 2014, they decided to purchase up to 80% of the outstanding shares. Some shares they already owned through a joint venture and some shares Temasek owned outright. In March 2014, Temasek offered $2.23 per share for the shares it did not own, but prior to the date of offering, the stock price of Olam had never been above $1.90. In fact in January or February of that year, you could have bought it in the range of $1.50 per share. $2.23 is by all accounts a generous price. If you had known of the impending Temasek offer, you might have purchased 2 million shares over a few weeks at a weighted cost average of let’s say $1.55 and made a tidy profit of around 70 cents per share of $1.4 million. It works the other way too when Temasek or GIC sell a particular stock. Someone with inside knowledge can also profit from Temasek selling as much as buying. Now you understand why Temasek and GIC make so many purchases a year despite publicly declaring they are long term holding investors? Every purchase and sale by Temasek is an opportunity for profit by an insider. And without complete transparency, we will never know what is the truth. I am just leaving it up to the reader to decide for themselves. Once Temasek and GIC starts hunting overseas for companies to buy, then the world becomes an oyster to the FamiLee.
We now come back to Ho and Temasek. By installing her as the CEO and Hsien Loong as the Chair of GIC, the number one family has an inside track on all future purchases and sales of companies that these 2 sovereign wealth fund own or intends to buy. If you ever wonder why Ho can be so stupid and buy some of the ridiculous companies that she has done, only to see them go belly up or lose huge values, well wonder no more. What she buys and sells and how much she makes or loses is irrelevant to her, as long as the Lees have already made their profits from insider knowledge of the individual stocks. She has been placed in there as a guaranteed source of inside information. And for this she has been richly rewarded. Let’s face it, for such a scam to work, only a very close relative of the Lees can be trusted and Ho Ching fits this bill.
We go back to the late Wong Ming Yang. Would she have been made CEO of Temasek Holdings if she was to remain the wife of Hsien Loong? Highly unlikely, almost zero chance. Ho Ching would have been just a casual flirt or a one night stand for LHL, and would have still been in a senior position somewhere in MINDEF, married to some DSO engineer or what have you. If Wong had not died, we would not have suffered $56 billion in Temasek losses after the subprime crisis.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124350003544761935
As well as the many losses after that, such as Shincorp. Her death alone, changed Singapore’s fortunes, resulting in all these billions in losses. Look at all the tightening of the CPF withdrawal rules, look at the low interest given to CPF ordinary accounts, look at all the increased in living costs because Temasek owned GLCs have to increase their profits to pay for the losses incurred by Ho. The scary part is that there are no signs she will be leaving anytime soon. Let’s say if Wong had not died and LHL was not married to Ho, Temasek would still be passively run by civil servants and such losses would never have incurred without heads rolling, if they were ever incurred at all. By simple virtue that Old Man could not carry out his plans because of the lack of a trusted figure. Or the other alternative was that Temasek would have been run by a professional manager. They tried it with Chip Goodyear, and even he was scared by the insider trading he saw. So, when he threatened to whistle blow on them, they just gave him a golden parachute and a confidentiality clause. His tenure of just 5 months (from Feb 2009 to July 2009) must be some sort of a record. His departure once again reinforced Old Man’s perception that he had to stay with Ho, regardless of how bad her investing was……. As long as he made money from it.
The impact of Wong’s death is absolutely tremendous in my opinion. Not only because of the direct losses of Billions of dollars incurred under Ho (that would not have been incurred if Temasek was still run by civil servants and not incurred if she was not the spouse of LHL), but the repercussions mentioned, such as high cost of living and CPF unavailability, that we are still feeling today. Little did we all know that such a death, hidden as much as possible by the PAP, would have such far ranging consequences.
Just my 2 cents.
The date is Oct 28[SUP]th[/SUP] 1982, and Mrs Lee Hsien Loong nee Wong Ming Yang has passed away. Many theories abound as to the nature of her death. The Official party line is that she passed away from a heart attack 3 weeks after giving birth. If you believe this, I have some land I want to sell you in Pulau Tekong. This is not likely because she was young, aged 31, when she passed, and 31 year olds just do not have heart attacks. In addition, given that she was giving birth to the future heir apparent, you can bet that she would have been subjected to all sorts of medical care and tests to make sure she was physically ok and had no problems in giving birth. Other theories indicated she committed suicide in a resort hotel in Sentosa. But the interesting thing is no autopsy was performed on her, so I leave that to your imagination to decide. Also, consider the following. Only her corneas were donated to be transplanted to the eyes of a schoolboy from Anderson Secondary School. Her kidneys were supposed to be transplanted but Dr. Kwa (brother of Gecko) said that it was too late. Other organs like the lungs, liver, etc were not even mentioned as transplant candidates. they would not be if she had poisoned herself. All her organs would have been useless for transplant, save the corneas.
Why is her death of such a profound influence on Singapore? The reason is that it altered the succession plans of the Lee family and resulted In the marriage of Lee Hsien Loong to Ho Ching and the horrors that followed that.
Old Man Lee was in a quandary. Around this time, he was finding out that number 2 son Hsien Yang was not interested in the family business at all. He is a carefree happy sort of chap and never took anything seriously. Furthermore, he was disobedient and did not follow papa’s instructions. Eg. He bought a Ferrari when specifically told by Daddy to keep a low profile. As well, he para jumped with the Commandoes when specifically forbidden to take the jump wings course. How could he be entrusted with positions of power and authority and toe the Family line? This was a big blow to the dynastic aspirations of Old Man.
As we know, his other child, Lee Wei Ling, is perfectly happy to remain a doctor and stay out of politics and stay out of running any serious endeavour like a sovereign wealth fund. Of course, if Wong Ming Yang had not died, it’s also highly unlikely she would be in politics or take a substantial role in a GLC or such, by simple virtue she is a doctor by training and profession. In the early 80s the grandchildren were all too young to take on any responsibility in the family business. The loss of Hsien Yang as a potential assistant successor was therefore a big blow.
The situation was solved with the marriage of LHL to Ho Ching. Ho was by all accounts an unorthodox individual. In those days, it was rare for women in Singapore to go into the engineering faculty in NUS. Not only did she do that, she later joined MINDEF as an engineer after graduating from NUS. Women in MINDEF were already a rarity (most being in the clerk or admin areas) and a woman engineer in MINDEF was even rarer. Being a woman, She must have faced a lot of bias and harassment in her initial years at MINDEF, but as everyone knows, she had a thick skin then and has one even till today. She had to be able to play ball with the boys and also be a team player, and hold her own in the face of intimidation and other such hazing. This is evident because she would rise up through the ranks to lead Chartered Industries. She must have been the only SE Asian woman in very male dominated defence and engineering industry. Goh Keng Swee was very impressed by her and by 1980 ended up having her, Su Guaning and Tham Choon Tat assist Philip Yeo to run DSO and the defence related companies. Lets remember that she graduated with an engineering degree from NUS only 4 years earlier in 1976. Quite a meteoric rise for anyone. At this point, she came to the attention of Old Man and Lee HL. The father was looking for a replacement for his wayward son Hsien Yang, and the son was looking for a replacement for his late wife. Both found what they wanted in Ho Ching.
We have to digress here and make a side trip into how Old man Lee really made his money. In the early days of his govt., his monthly salary as a Prime Minister was around $6000 per month. Back then, the superscale system was not even in place. $6000 per month was pittance even for 70s, and his wife was certainly earning a multiple of that. Of course, it can be said that his wife’s money was also his money since they both founded the law firm together. But I am sure Old man Lee did not see it as that. Not many people know, but LKY was a big time stock punter. He was a heavy speculator in the local stock market as well as a stock investor. He was so invested in the stock market that rumours had it he ordered the stock exchange to suspend trading to protect his positions once in the 1970s and once again in 1986 in the midst of the Pan El crisis. An estimated 25 stock broking firms were going to go bankrupt due to the Pan El crisis, one of which was J Ballas, run by his brother Freddie Lee and was the defacto Lee family stock purchasing vehicle.
The marriage of Ho and his son LHL perfectly dovetailed what LKY wanted to do with his stock picking acumen. Not satisfied with just punting in the local stock market, and the limited profits that could bring due to the small size of the local stock market, Old Man had to think global. It’s no surprise that he was also the Chairman of GIC. GIC’s mandate was to invest outside of Singapore. Until Ho was installed to run Temasek, Temasek’s mandate was to invest in the local market and be the holding vehicle for the Govt’s GLC. When Ho was propelled in to be CEO of Temasek, a position for which she was completely unqualified, she changed Temasek’s mandate completely to include international investments. This was on direction of Old Man. Prior to Ho taking over, Temasek was not very aggressive and was run passively by civil servants strictly as a holding company for GLCs. Temask’s fortunes therefore depended on the business acumen of the GLCs it owned. Now, Temasek’s fortune was dependent on the business acumen of Ho, which in retrospect, we know is not very good.
It turns out that Old Man’s stock punting acumen was not really acumen at all but more like insider trading. If you knew what a GIC or what Temasek was going to buy a few weeks or even months before it happened, you could get in on the action before that and buy that particular share and make a tidy profit. Using his brother Freddie’s stockbrokerage J Ballas and Later Vickers Ballas, enabled him to have complete anonymity. After all, his brother is not going to whistle blow on him. How does this work?
Taking a recent example, Olam International. This was a company that Temasek had a minor holdings in. In March 2014, they decided to purchase up to 80% of the outstanding shares. Some shares they already owned through a joint venture and some shares Temasek owned outright. In March 2014, Temasek offered $2.23 per share for the shares it did not own, but prior to the date of offering, the stock price of Olam had never been above $1.90. In fact in January or February of that year, you could have bought it in the range of $1.50 per share. $2.23 is by all accounts a generous price. If you had known of the impending Temasek offer, you might have purchased 2 million shares over a few weeks at a weighted cost average of let’s say $1.55 and made a tidy profit of around 70 cents per share of $1.4 million. It works the other way too when Temasek or GIC sell a particular stock. Someone with inside knowledge can also profit from Temasek selling as much as buying. Now you understand why Temasek and GIC make so many purchases a year despite publicly declaring they are long term holding investors? Every purchase and sale by Temasek is an opportunity for profit by an insider. And without complete transparency, we will never know what is the truth. I am just leaving it up to the reader to decide for themselves. Once Temasek and GIC starts hunting overseas for companies to buy, then the world becomes an oyster to the FamiLee.
We now come back to Ho and Temasek. By installing her as the CEO and Hsien Loong as the Chair of GIC, the number one family has an inside track on all future purchases and sales of companies that these 2 sovereign wealth fund own or intends to buy. If you ever wonder why Ho can be so stupid and buy some of the ridiculous companies that she has done, only to see them go belly up or lose huge values, well wonder no more. What she buys and sells and how much she makes or loses is irrelevant to her, as long as the Lees have already made their profits from insider knowledge of the individual stocks. She has been placed in there as a guaranteed source of inside information. And for this she has been richly rewarded. Let’s face it, for such a scam to work, only a very close relative of the Lees can be trusted and Ho Ching fits this bill.
We go back to the late Wong Ming Yang. Would she have been made CEO of Temasek Holdings if she was to remain the wife of Hsien Loong? Highly unlikely, almost zero chance. Ho Ching would have been just a casual flirt or a one night stand for LHL, and would have still been in a senior position somewhere in MINDEF, married to some DSO engineer or what have you. If Wong had not died, we would not have suffered $56 billion in Temasek losses after the subprime crisis.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124350003544761935
As well as the many losses after that, such as Shincorp. Her death alone, changed Singapore’s fortunes, resulting in all these billions in losses. Look at all the tightening of the CPF withdrawal rules, look at the low interest given to CPF ordinary accounts, look at all the increased in living costs because Temasek owned GLCs have to increase their profits to pay for the losses incurred by Ho. The scary part is that there are no signs she will be leaving anytime soon. Let’s say if Wong had not died and LHL was not married to Ho, Temasek would still be passively run by civil servants and such losses would never have incurred without heads rolling, if they were ever incurred at all. By simple virtue that Old Man could not carry out his plans because of the lack of a trusted figure. Or the other alternative was that Temasek would have been run by a professional manager. They tried it with Chip Goodyear, and even he was scared by the insider trading he saw. So, when he threatened to whistle blow on them, they just gave him a golden parachute and a confidentiality clause. His tenure of just 5 months (from Feb 2009 to July 2009) must be some sort of a record. His departure once again reinforced Old Man’s perception that he had to stay with Ho, regardless of how bad her investing was……. As long as he made money from it.
The impact of Wong’s death is absolutely tremendous in my opinion. Not only because of the direct losses of Billions of dollars incurred under Ho (that would not have been incurred if Temasek was still run by civil servants and not incurred if she was not the spouse of LHL), but the repercussions mentioned, such as high cost of living and CPF unavailability, that we are still feeling today. Little did we all know that such a death, hidden as much as possible by the PAP, would have such far ranging consequences.
Just my 2 cents.
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