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Note: The late Christopher Huchen excel at the "rhetorical demolition" of his opponents at debates. His is a specific brand of intellectual ruthlessness - where he don't just correct a misconception, but he completely vaporize the foundational logic of the person holding it. "Since when did a $500M corporate cash call require a Parliamentary debate? And where is the CEO hiding?" Welcome to Singapore, where if a government-linked company loses a dollar, it must be debated with the same intensity as a national security crisis. Here is why a routine corporate choice turned into a political drama: The Invisible C-Suite: You want to know where SIA CEO Goh Choon Phong or the C-suites are? No they have not locked themselves in the cargo haul of a 777. They are practicing the ancient, elite corporate art of "Strategic Invisibility." When a multi-million-dollar cash call is burning a hole in your pocket, the best place for a CEO to be is nowhere near ...

The public commentary surrounding SIA investment in Air India has become highly reactive, shifting from valid commercial evaluation to a simplistic blame game, and some even drifted into nationalist and racial populism. So far, I do not see comments or posts with domain knowledge. All are just noises touching on surface issues and questions. The only exception is my own previous post  India is sitting on a sweet spot in aviation industry   Traditional financial analysis is a myopic and wrong approach here because SIA's 25.1% holdings in Air India is not a straight-off passive investment. That is precisely where all the noises are coming from. Almost everyone are led to think it's all about trying to capture a slice of India's booming market. That may be true of Vistara, but the game changed in 2024. You need use the macro-economic lens to see above the noise. I see two points being pushed consistently which I like to address here: 1. SIA has a dismal poor record of inves...

The most frustrating psychological realities of the financial world is "hindsight bias". This is the  "I knew-it-all-along" phenomenon. Everyone look like a genius after the charts have already climbed or dived. When looking backward, market movements look like a predictable sequence of logical events. In reality, the future is always a messy cloud of probabilities. There are four types of "post-fact expertise": - The retrospective predictors: They knew the stock was going to crash, or soar. Did they hold a short or long position pre-fact? - The opportunity capitalisers: They leverage market events to build a brand/sell subscriptions. - The emotionally charged bystanders: They loudly vent or brag to cope with psychological pain/pleasure. - The institutional evaluators: They methodically audit what went right or wrong to improve. Over social media, I see lots of emotionally charged angry bystanders whose views or comments of the SIA's Vistara-Air Ind...

Mohammud had 3 sons, all died at child-birth. His line came through his daughter Fatima and her husband Ali ibn Abi Talib, via their sons Hasan and Husayn . In the Islamic world, many claim descendancy from the Prophet. They are accepted in traditional community but none proven via actual DNA test. People who claim this lineage are called Sayyids (or Sadat). This status exists in both Sunni and Shia communities across the Muslim world. In Twelver Shia Islam (the dominant form in Iran), the Twelve Imams are regarded as descendants of Husayn . Many religious scholars, including some ayatollahs, claim to belong to these lines. Visual marker in Iran and some other Shia contexts: black turban = claimed Sayyid (descent from the Prophet); white turban = non-Sayyid scholar.    Qatadah ibn Idris. leader of the tribe of Banu Qatadah, seized control of Mecca in 1201 and founded the dynasty that held the Sharifate of Mecca continuously until 1925. The  tribe claims desce...