24 November, 2009

Heads up folks

Banks will be officially closed from Thursday to Sunday (26-29th November), which means the little elves will not be around to stock up your ATMs for you. 

To avoid unnecessary frustration in the coming days, fill out your wallets today. It will give the nice banking people one more day to refill the ATMs for all the uncool people who do not read the UAECB. 

Pass the word around so you and your friends are not stranded at a petrol station because the ATM was out of fuloos

6 comments:

Dubai Jazz said...

Thanks Hemlock,

Locked n' loaded now.

Eid mubarak to you...

BuJ said...

Eid Mubarak Hemlock.. very smart observation. Thanks for the tip!

btw, i use the lovely Eppco/Enoc card so i don't carry to much cash on me, especially for betrol!

hemlock said...

Eid mubarak boys(and everyone else too)!

DJ: haha! i still havent gotten my monies out =P i should take my advice more often.
however, if i do run out of cash over the holidays, now i know who to turn to... *wiggles eyebrows* :D

Buj: just doing my virtual duty... i dont know why the real nick hates us bankers so much. we are genuinely looking out for your interest - pun intended. ;)

all the fancy cars fill up at emarat. coolness fail on your part!

Lirun said...

i think maybe given that you touched the subject of money you can write about the crisis that the world is so concerned about

hemlock said...

lirun: free media is not always a good thing. sometimes we write trash just to fill the empty space. that said, im a casual observer / bystander who is watching the current wave with mild amusement.

if i really wanted to do a study (and i do, and i think i will a couple of years from now), it would the algosaibi/saad group saga unfolding in saudi. 1/6th of Dubai's exposure on two family owned businesses. if that isnt the most classic cock-up in the history of banking, i dont know what is.

Seabee and Grape shisha blog have done spot-on analysis of what's going down and how, as usual, the world press is over reacting. no point of reinventing the wheel here.

my take? here goes:
as far as the stock market are concerned... for some reason i've always imagined them being run by squirrels on red bull. mass hysteria on caffeine. nuff said.

the only thing dubai has down wrong is how it managed the announcement. the request for deferral of payments is valid and not outlandish at all - why it ever came up and how things shouldve been done differently 35 million years ago... get over it. it's happened. we cannot go back and fix things. we have a problem, we have it now, so we need to look for solution, not opportunities to score points.

you may say the investors invested in good faith - and their faith has been shattered. yes, and yes. but what does that say for the investor's prudence and due diligence? assessing risks associated with potential investments is and continues to remain the responsibility of the investor - and this point cannot be stressed enough.

it's always been known how intertwined govts' personal and commercial interests were. it's public knowledge that there is little transparency as far as accounts are concerned. even if it wasnt, who saw Enron coming? or Satyam? each employed one of the big 4s. how was incorrect information better than no information? at least with no information you know how blind you are.

it amazes me how conveniently people want a piece of the pie where there are returns to be had. as soon as the trend sours, they demand heads roll.
you, dear investor, set yourself up for this.

Lirun said...

thanks for your thoughts.. its hard for me to respond only because most of my knowledge comes from this blog plus some wiki bits..

but while i buy your investor beware gig i also think that when i a country pimps itself out to be the next infallible tourism investment of the world.. then for the sake of its sustainability it should offer some more substance to its investors..

then again with a local population of no more than 15% and no horizon to fold in a huge part of the foreign work force in anyway there did appear to be something fundamentally short termish about the whole thing..

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