Dear readers,

According to the blog post made in mrbiao.com, the writer found that Holland-Bukit Panjang Town Council was listed as one of the majority shareholders with 530,000 shares, currently valued at about $3 million.

This appears as a shock to me because Town Councils are established to manage the common property (void decks, corridors and lifts, etc.) and improve the living enviroment for the state, and investments ought to be left to GICs.

According to the Town Council Act, a Town Council may invest its funds in accordance with the standard investment power of statutory bodies as defined in section 33A of the Interpretation Act. I would think that Town Councils would be investing in low risk investment instruments such as bonds instead of high risk equities such as stocks.

With strong likelihood that Town Council would most likely not have a strong investment team to manage their investments, I would be curious who makes the investing decisions for Town Councils and how are they audited and verified.

By looking at what I consider as poor investment choices made by Holland-Bukit Panjang Town Council to invest in Creative Technologies, what happens if investments made by Town Councils were to incur losses? Wouldn’t it be better if Town Councils be restricted to low risk investments since they would most likely not have the right people for the job?

Besides, the main source of revenue for Town Councils should not be from investments anyway.

What do you think?

[tags]Town Councils, Creative, investment[/tags]