Daily Lesson from Life 09 December 2008

No Headline Today too.

The effect of the Marathon on my body is still clearly there as we moved around Hong Kong for our holidays! We went to Macau in the morning and visited the Venetians. It is indeed a very grand and massive building though the staffs I met there said the visitors number has decreased markedly over the last few months.

The major blow came from the restriction of visitors from mainland China to Macau and the 2nd blow is the aftermath of the financial crisis brought on by the subprime problems!

In fact, one of the staffs told me that there were announcement the same afternoon that it is cutting 2000 jobs in Venetians and another 2000 at Golden Sands, a sister organization of the same owners.

Lessons:

1. leverage is good but over-leveraging increased the risks to potentially unsustainable level. When cashflow dried up, the people who leveraged can be brought to their knees. This is what happened to the owners of Golden Sands and Venetians in Macau!;

2. no one's job is safe in a down turn and everyone should prepared for the worst in their personal finance. If there is saving for the rainy day, then you will be better off and live to fight another day when the sky opened up with a heavy downpour!;

3. political consideration is one of the major factors to consider and prepared for in international business transactions. The restriction of visitors from mainland China should have been considered and analysis of 'what if' done and the impact tentatively quantified. I hope Venetians had plan B tough it does not looked like it!

Debt is good, but too much is too risky. Contingency means planning for the most unexpected. Do we really work hard to plan for risks? This is one major learning point for sure!

For the 7e practitioners, leaders must take responsibilities when our risk management failed!