We have uploaded the Minibond Powerpoint Slides Presentation handouts. You can download the handouts here. The download link is at the bottom right corner. These are the revised slides to protect the legal strategy.

Warrant to Act

We have uploaded the Class Action Contract Warrant to Act. You can download the form, sign it and return the Warrant to Act to us with a cheque of $1,000 being the deposit. The cheque will not be bank in until the start of the Class Action litigation seminar which will be held on or about February 2009 or March 2009.

The estimated total fees will be about $4,800. Kindly also write your name behind the cheque.

Warrant to Act to be uploaded soon

Hi,

We will be posting the final Warrant to Act on Monday, 22 December 2008. Interested participants can download the Warrant to Act and fill it in to join the Class Action.

Due to many requests, the deadline for joining the Class Action is extended.

Legal Strategy and Legal Cost to be revealed

I will be revealing the legal strategy for this class action in a few days' time including the legal costs involved.

The tentative cut-off date for joining the class action is on 30 November 2008.

To join the class action, you need to return the signed Warrant to Act with a cheque of $1,000 (which will not be banked in until the first class action briefing).

Do write your name on the reverse of the cheque.

CLASS ACTION LEGAL STRATEGY as per my email to Mr Tan Kin Lian

Hi Kin Lian,

Thanks for your query on the collection legal action or class action. You may post in in your blog and I thank you in advance.

Update of class action

At the onset, I have met some 200 investors at my law firm for the legal briefings for the Lehman fiasco. I am heartened to report that they are all keen to join the class action.

A class action occurs when all the plaintiffs suffered a common greviance and sues together. They will share legal fees collectively to fund the class action and likewise if they lose, they share the legal fees.

I prefer not to discuss the exact legal strategy of the class action in the open. This is to counter the possibiliity that the potential Defendants may counter this and we may lose the element of surprise. There will be a special briefing in a closed door auditorium for the class investors later,

I am in favour of the class action as this pressurises the potential Defendants to defend a collective claim that there is a common pattern of misrepresentation and mis-selling. The class action lends weight to the claims of the investors. They also share evidence.

This is likely to be a multi-million law suit filed in the High Court.

Legal grounds

Briefly, misrepresentation occurs when the financial institutions or its officers made misleading statements, which they know to be false, in order to induce the investors to buy the investment product. One example, the use of the term “Mini-bond”, it is actually not a bond but a complex investment product.

Mis-selling happens when the financial institutions did not do a proper risk profile analysis of its investors before selling the investment product. The investor may be a conservative investor who wants capital protection and yet was sold this complex investment product.

The other general claim is for negligent professional advice. This happens when the financial institution advises the purchase of the investment product wrongly.

There is no possible counterclaim by the potential Defendants in the class action.

Class action mechanics

As a start, the investors share legal costs of an initial deposit of $1,000. I anticipate the legal costs to be in the low few thousand for each investor in the class actions. For example, 200 investors in the class would have raised $200,000 to fund the class action.

We have collected the cheques from them in preparation for the class action but the cheques were not banked in yet. Once their efforts to resolve with the financial institutions fails, we will proceed to file the class action.

Past class action background

As a matter of background, I represented a successful class action in the Wen Long Money changer remittance scam whereby 900 over Chinese nationals sued Mr Lum Chen Fong, who siphoned off almost $4.75 million. The Chinese Nationals wanted the moneychanger to remit their money to China but he failed to do so. We were successful in the recovery.

I will be glad to work together with you in the class action. There is only strength in unity of the investors. My Lehman hotline is 9845 6225. My Lehman e-mail is lehmanlawyers@gmail.com

Tan Kin Lian's email to me dated 22 October 2008.

Leonard

Can you give me a proposal for collective legal action. I wish to post this in my blog and ask the investors to indicate their desire to participate in this collective action.

In your proposal, please indicate the grounds for the action, the approach to be taken, the expected legal cost to the investor and the chance of winning. Please indicate the additional cost, if the investor loses the case and has to pay the other party's cost.

Thanks.


--
Tan Kin Lian

Class action interview soon in Netherlands

Ever since I started the lead on the class action, I was contacted by various organisations for interviews. The latest is from Netherlands, which will protrayed the impact of the class action in the Singapore economic model.

The extract from the email is attached

Dear Mr. Loo,

Thank you for your positive response to our first contact. As we've said by phone one of our TV teams will be in Singapore between Monday Nov. 3rd and Thursday Nov. 13th, to produce a documentary about Singapore as crisisproof (?) economic model.

But first please allow us to properly introduce ourselves: VPRO TV, national non-commercial television in the Netherlands, is one of nine larger public broadcasters. VPRO TV currently airs the weekly news documentary series 'Backlight', that offers an in-depth, internationally oriented look at issues and developments behind the daily news. Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, Kishore Mahbubani, Francis Fukuyama, and Amartya Sen are some of our most recent interviewees. VPRO produces for channel 2 in the Netherlands. Backlight is broadcast every Monday evening, prime time, from 21.00 on, with a fixed duration of 50 minutes. Most episodes of Backlight are filmed entirely on location, and presented without studio. Our website: www.vpro.nl/backlight For international versions of earlier episodes: http://youtube.com/vprointernational

For a 50 minute episode to be broadcast February 2009 we would like to portray Singapore as an alternative and successful economic model, now that the Anglo-Saxon model is passing through a turbulent phase. To speak about and film the way the crisis is arriving in Singapore (and affecting people) and how it is being dealt with, we'd like to have a phone call with you. And we'd like to see if it would be possible to one of the investors you are representing. Have they grouped up and is there a spokesperson?

Other elements in our film:
- interview with professor of business strategy Narayan Pant (INSEAD)
- leadership summit INSEAD: is Asia riding or writing the future?
- possible meeting with Mr. Ngiam Tong Dow
- interviews with Kishore Mahbubani and Jim Rogers (second week)

What would be a good moment to have a call (7 hours time difference)

Yours sincerely,
William de Bruijn research
W.de.Bruijn@vpro.nl
On behalf of Shuchen Tan director

Communications with Financial Institutions

This is a general note to those who lodged a formal complaint to the financial institutions over allegations, if any, of misrepresentation and/or mis-selling.

The financial institutions may request a meeting or interview with you after receipt of the complaint.

Before you attend the meeting or interview, you should ask them for a copy of the list of questions they intend to ask at the meeting or interview. This will help you prepare for the meeting or interview.

Do you know of any one outside of the "vulnerable investors" category who benefited from a return of their investment after the meeting or interview?

Do share your thoughts with me.