Sailing away from the Lehman storm
To clear my jet-lagged head of the debilitating Lehman-led gloom and doom that constantly rose from the business papers offered by the soothing hands of the cabin crew of Singapore Airlines Flights 915 and 002 as we flew last Friday from Magellan’s side of the Pacific to Vespucci’s, I requested my hosts to book me for a bit of sailing at the San Francisco Bay in the afternoon of the 25^th.  They did and, at least for about an hour and a half, I felt what it was to be like Nicolas Lazares. Nicolas Lazares, a managing director of Lehman Brothers Holdings who retired early this year just before the storm set in, is into sailing and more. Click for Complete Article
 

Ask StanChart no stupid questions
The combined gravitas of the resource persons matched the weighty subject matter of the consultation.  Sen. Angara called attention to the “financial turbulence [that] is swirling around our head and all over the world.” He thus wanted the public consultation to “focus on our situation, of course, and according to the newspapers, certain Philippine banks reportedly have a total exposure of US$386”  He proceeded to mention the seven banks which were reported in the papers to have invested in Lehman Brothers, with their alleged respective exposures, naming them as follows, “Banco de Oro, 13 million; DBP, 90 million, but this has been considerably reduced according  to our chief executive Rey David; Metropolitan Bank, 71 million; Rizal Commercial Bank, 40 million; Standard Chartered, 26 million; Bank of Commerce, 15 million; United Coconut Planters Bank, 10 million.” Click for Complete Article
 

HB No.5043 is not good for your health, constitutionally speaking
I object to House Bill No. 5043 in its entirety and not just to some of its parts. My reason is that the parts that I object to, which are the provisions that, to me and to others, are unwarranted intrusions into a person’s privacy and unjustified curtailment of his freedom of conscience, form the heart of the bill, and excising them would leave the bill a dead letter.
The right to privacy is settled law. Ever since 1968, when the Supreme Court decided the case of Morfe v. Mutuc, it has been recognized that “the right to privacy…is fully deserving of constitutional protection.”  More explicitly, in 1998, the Supreme Court ruled, in Ople v. Torres, that “the right to privacy is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution.”
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Trade Disruption Insurance
On Friday next week, the 24th of October, from one who is most likely the oldest living icon of Philippine insurance will come a half-day seminar on what is most probably the newest risk management tool to considered by businessmen in the country: trade disruption insurance (TDI).
TDI is a logical progeny of the modern phenomenon  of globalization of trade. Trade, for most countries, is no longer confined within their borders. Click for Complete Article