lokety

After two years of privatization since July 2007, Malaysia’s leading mobile telecommunications corporation Maxis Communications Berhad has announced that it will relist on the local stock exchange and launch an IPO with an offering of 2.25 billion shares.

The announcement was made after market trading hours on Friday 18 September 2009, which also indicated that 175M shares will be offered to the public.

The company and its various subsidiaries recorded a total revenue of RM6.75B for FY06, RM7.69B for FY07, RMRM8.45B for FY08, and RM4.24B for H109. Mobile subscriptions have grown from 8.1M by end of 2006 to 11.4M by June 2009, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18%.

Non-voice revenue, which included services such as SMS, content downloads and wireless broadband, increased from RM1.51B in 2006 to RM2.28 in 2008 at CGAR of 23%. Wireless broadband subscriptions increased 35 times to 140K by end of 2008.

Source: Maxis to offer 2.25b shares under IPO
<URL:http://www.theedgemalaysia.com/business-news/149745-flash-maxis-to-list-malaysian-ops-under-ipo.html>

If you’re a home owner with a bank loan in your property in Malaysia, have you checked if your current rate is still competitive? The loan market in Malaysia has been very healthy and changes quite significantly every six months.

Although the base lending rate (BLR) has steadily increased over the past few quarters, banks are coming up with new packages that are even attractive to current loaners. Some offer 1 to 3 percent interest rates for the first 1 to 5 years, while others continue to promote consistently lower than BLR rates, as low as BLR -2 percent.

Refinancing a home loan is even tangible for those that are less than the agreed period, typically five years, where termination comes with a monetary penalty. Competition has resulted in competing banks offering positive savings even after paying the penalty to your current bank.

A newer trend in home loans or mortgage loans is in attaching a cash deposit account that is linked to the loan. This encourages you to deposit your savings and income to the account, which is then used by the bank as collateral to reduce the daily interest charged on the balance of your home loan. As long as you maintain and/or add more funds into the account, the home loan interest is significantly reduced on a daily basis. In the end, you can effectively reduce your loan tenure by a few years! By the way, you also have the flexibility to withdraw from the account, just like your standard expenses account.

Review and refinance your home loan every few years because such products from the banks change often. Just like the credit business, debts are big dollar business for banks and financial institutions.

My current bank was not particularly keen on keeping customers when I called to enquire if I can enjoy the better terms on newer loan packages that it was offering. When they said they could not help me at all, I decided to look elsewhere for better rates. Another lesson I learnt is that the international banks are more aggressive in their offerings compared to the local banks, a good sign and wake-up call for the laggard banks here.

A good site to learn more on how you can save interests on home loans and consolidate debts to be more financially free, I recommend Rebuild.org. The site offers tips and links to loan products that may just save you years of interest, the number one enemy (and sometimes friend) to your personal wealth.

Technorati Tags: paid post, loan, mortgage, home loan, refinance, interest rate, base lending rate, bank loan

The Income Revenue Board (IRB) in Malaysia has announced that they have in excess of RM4 billion of tax revenue that shall be returned to 380,000 taxpayers this year.

The way the tax system works here for wage earners is that IRB automatically takes an estimated cut of their salaries every payday until the end of the financial year. After some serious number crunching and nipping a little interest from the coffers, IRB calculates the actual difference. Depending on the calculations, a taxpayer may have to give the difference to the authority or receive a refund around this time of the year.

Now, applying the classic principle of 90/10, this is how much an average taxpayer is getting back this year:

(0.1 * RM4,000,000,000) / (0.9 * 380,000) = RM1169.59

What do you know… I’m getting even less than the average!

Something must be wrong with their calculations. Perhaps they need the extra revenue for more accurate floating point calculators? ;)

Check out these links for some good reading, especially the Wikipedia one which has more links.

Links:

Too Much – A First-Ever Look at Wealth in the World
<URL:http://www.cipa-apex.org/toomuch/articlenew2006/Dec7a.html>

Wikipedia – Income disparity
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_disparity>

Technorati Tags: income tax, taxpayer, malaysia tax, salary, income disparity, wealth distribution, income revenue board