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.

CLASS LAWSUIT - INTERESTED?

My reflections after meeting with a class lawsuit lawyer

As a Minibond (and I think this applies to other similar products also) victim, I only started my involvement by going to the Speakers' Corner two weeks ago on Saturday. It was great to have Mr. Tan organizing this and providing us with a lot of information. We even have a speaker coming from MAS at the very first meeting.

The current approach is to have victims complain to their banks/FI. Then, if not satisfactory, escalate that to FIDReC for amount up to $50,000. [There are talks about raising the amount but one of the attendees of the meeting below said he called FIDReC and the answer is still up to $50,000 so far.]

Then, I read about the various email streams of people following this process going to the bank/FI. One person said there are five pages of forms to fill out and then you have to sign and submit to the bank/FI. Some said the bank/FI filled it out for him and he regreted because the banks are against you, not for you.

I have not done this complain process myself. Why? Because going into a bank/FI sitting across from their lawyer or lawyer-trained personnel is like going in naked! Not only that, whatever you said or induced to say, will be used against you.

That is why at our second gathering at the Speakers' Corner last Saturday, I made some handout trying to pull all the people who are interested in evaluating the feasibility of class lawsuits together. I said feasibility because I had a lot of questions in my mind, just like most of you, as to whether that is the best way to go.

Coincidentally, a lawyer called Leonard Loo, Managing Partner of Leonard Loo & Co, was on site and many people approached him on the possibility of class lawsuit and I submitted my name also. He was featured in Channelnewsasia.com and also the evening Chinese newspaper. I don't think it is appropriate for me to include his email address here as I am not trying to advertise for him (and you can choose your own lawyer - I am merely sharing my experience with you and I think others would probably be similar). Anyone interested in contacting him can email to me at my hotmail.com address of hk5d@hotmail.com and I will relay privately.

On Sunday, I got a call from the law firm scheduling the group consultation with me. As it turned out, there were so many people that we had to spread the meetings over several days and several groups a day.

So, I am writing this right after I finished the meeting and as soon as I got home. In fact, before the meeting, I wrote a one-pager of questions for the lawyer after sharing with people in our group. And the lawyer compiled an FAQ based on the list of questions.

One thing which I would not discuss here is the legal strategy. Rather, I would try to address some of the high level questions we discussed:

· Should I go through the complaint to bank/FI process or even the FIDReC process myself first? There are many factors to consider. One of them is this process limits to $50,000 so far. Even if to be raised higher, do you feel comfortable facing lawyer or lawyer-trained bank/FI personnel yourself? The class lawsuit process will by-pass this complain/escalation process.

· How much would it cost? It depends on the number of people participating. A law firm would typically ask for an initial deposit of $1,000. Given the potential victims number 10,000 in Singapore, it would only take a few % of the people participating to create a sufficient war chest.

· Would the legal fees be proportional to my investments? No, because the amount of paper work and process is similar whether you are investing one more zero or not.

· Is it worth the legal fees? The first question I asked myself is: do I think I can do a better job as an untrained legal person than a lawyer? Especially we are talking about a total investment in the magnitude of $500 million across all the victims. If the class lawsuit was justified for a social club, e.g., the $500 million is huge in comparison! So, I asked myself another way: do I think by using a lawyer, I can increase my recovery by an additional $1,000 (or whatever the legal fee is, you fill in the blank)? The answer is obvious.

· This process is particularly important because in Hong Kong, the govenor and the HKFA pressured the banks to agree to buy back at fair value. There is not such progress in Singapore.

· For those people who don't participate in the class lawsuit and do not pay, would they get to participate in the settlement/award? No.

· Can one join the class lawsuit later? Those who start the first wave or risk more likely have advantage.

· Class lawsuit has another advantage also: if we got multiple people experiencing similar misleading sales process, it would just provide the court with more support that people are mis-led.

· Of course, the ultimate downside would be getting nothing back even after you spend the legal fee. You need to make your own assessment taking into consideration whether you truely think you have been mis-led.

In fact, after I finished the initial free consultation, a reporter interviewed me outside the law office. She asked me how I feel compared to when I walked in. I said when I walked into the group meeting, I had a lot of questions in my mind. When I walked out, I felt a lot clearer and a sign of relief. On my way driving home, I asked myself why? The best way to summarize it is: I am tired of playing DIY lawyer myself!

So, if you have not consulted a lawyer, why not attend one since initial consultation is usually free.

Here is a link to the Channel News article:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/383040/1/.html

Patrick Lung

hk5d@hotmail.com

Speaker's Corner

Mr Leonard Loo will be present at the Speaker's Corner on 25 October 2008 on or about 6pm.

Appearance on Channel NewsAsia

Mr Leonard Loo will make an appearance on Channel NewsAsia on 23 October 2008, 10pm with regards to the Lehman Brothers Case. He will be providing more information in the news. Kindly stay tuned to Channel NewsAsia!

Lehman Brothers Legal Briefing

I sympathise with your predicament pertaining to the investments.

I met Mr Tan Kin Lian at the Speakers’ Corner last Saturday 18 October 2008 and met some of your fellow investors therein.

I am organising legal briefings at my law firm, Leonard Loo & Co, over the Lehman fiasco. This started on 20 October 2008 and was attended by over 100 investors to-date. If you attend this legal briefing, there is no obligation for you to appoint our law firm and there is no fee payable by you for attending this legal briefing.

Kindly contact my law firm staff, Ms Ayu, Ms Ivy, Ms Wati, Ms Azleen or Ms Cindy for appointments at this legal briefing. I will be pleased to meet you at this legal briefing and answer your queries. You will meet other investors in a similar situation therein.

The weekdays’ timeslots are from

4pm to 4.30pm
7pm to 7.30 pm
7.30pm to 8pm
8pm to 8.30pm

The Sunday 26 October 2008 special timeslots (at half hourly intervals) are from

2pm to 6pm
7pm to 9pm


Our law firm’s Lehman hotline to call is

(Office) 6557 2422

(Mobile) 9845 6225

I look forward to meeting you soon. You may also email me on your preferred timeslots for the legal briefings, do include your name, contact details and the investment product.

These are the related links to Channel NewsAsia:-

1. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/383040/1/.html
2. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/cna/cgi-bin/search/search_7days.pl?status=&search=leonard%20loo&id=383040