Category: lifestyle

Kuala Lumpur-based Fuller Academy is poised to enrol to 30,000 learners across ASEAN through its 12 sustainability short courses, designed and curated by the industry, for the industry, to enhance talents’ knowledge and skills in sustainability.

Chief Executive Officer Wan Imran said all programmes certified by Human Resource Development Corporation (HRDCorp) are part of micro-credential short courses, which aim to provide knowledge solutions for talents, in line with the global demand for talent upskilling in sustainability.

“Based on a recent analysis by Bloomberg, global ESG assets are on track to exceed $53 trillion by 2025, representing more than a third of the $140.5 trillion in projected total assets under management. This is a strong driving force encouraging the industry to shift towards a more sustainable approach. Hence, now is a critical time for organisations to start enabling their talents with knowledge and purpose in the areas of sustainability. This is also aligned with our national agenda of creating 200,000 green jobs by 2030.” he said during the launch of Fuller Academy.

To date, more than 1,600 participants from various industries have signed up across various of our programs from within the country and abroad.

“Our learners come from different industries and backgrounds, as we offer a range of courses targeting different skill sets from sustainability communications to the introduction of carbon emissions. We have been getting a lot of learners from ASEAN and other regions, with many learners hailing from Europe. The courses which were curated with our global instructors have set a new standard in sustainability learning, which is effective, practical and engaging.” he added.

Breaking it down further, Imran said the courses are all designed and created by industry experts and practitioners thus providing insights into the practical industry knowledge.

“We have made it accessible geographically and financially. Being an online platform, anyone from across the region and beyond can sign up as a learner. For Malaysia-based companies, they can benefit from the financial support HRDCorp can provide, and for outside of Malaysia, they can also take advantage of our entry-level pricing.”

“The courses are designed to be short and bite-sized, with the flexibility for the learners to complete the course in their own time within the monthly cohorts. This on-demand format is

ideal for busy professionals, allowing them to learn around their working schedule through a structured yet flexible course.”

In conjunction with the launch, Fuller Academy also hosted a series of dialogue sessions on sustainability, attended by experts in the field such as Elina Jani from Malaysian Green Technology And Climate Change Corporation (MGTC), Wan Dazriq from Ethis Malaysia, Karina Cady from Nandina Partners, Yasmin Rasyid from EcoKnights, and Yasir Qureshi from Kantar Malaysia.

About Fuller Academy:

Fuller Academy is the trusted strategic partner in the business sustainability journey, providing industry-driven sustainability education through online courses. Current open enrollment includes Fundamentals of Business Sustainability, Introduction to Carbon Emissions, Internal Communications for Sustainability, and Shaping Consumer-Centric Sustainable Strategy.

Whether we are business owners or in employment oftentimes we neglect our legal well-being. The general notion is ‘what isn’t broken need not be fixed’.

What we fail to recognise is that most of the time, a lot of our legal problems, which may at the material time appear small or insignificant, can with time and neglect, multiply and become costly to rectify.

Most times these legal crises and complications can be averted or reduced if the right steps are taken at the appropriate time.

Why is a Legal Health Check Important?

It is important to remember that if your financial and legal matters are badly managed, you are directly exposing yourself personally as well as your company and clients to various legal implications.

These risks can cause unnecessary cost, loss of business relationships, knowledge and possible statutory or regulatory breaches. The effect of a badly managed business is far- reaching and can in some situations take years to rectify/remedy.

The advice here is to be constantly aware and apply your mind to a couple of key areas when you are performing your own legal health check. Here are some of them:

1. Have You Complied with the Relevant Statutory Regulations & Laws?

Often, as business owners, you may not be aware of the changes in law that may have taken place, and as such need to be advised by your legal advisers on the latest legislation or amendments to any current legislation that concerns the industry you are in and the services you render.

There are currently more than 20 new Acts that have been made and countless new regulations and amendments to the current laws.

If you are not keeping abreast with the changes, you will be exposing yourself and your business to risk. What you do not can hurt you!

2. Partnerships and Shareholding

Make it a yearly affair where you have a formal discussion with your partners/directors on their roles, scope of work, performance and entitlements.

Have these discussions minuted and served on them officially. This makes it easier to address partnership or business issues and enables you to make any necessary changes to your business structure, revising targets, scope of work etc.

It is also of utmost importance to have written partnership and/or shareholders agreement to cover all terms of your partnerships and shareholding.

Ensure that your agreements adequately deal with matters such as buyouts, raising capitals, succession, put & call options and exit clauses. Your partners/directors must also be fully aware of their duties and obligations under the new Companies Act 2016.

3. Trade Creditors and Debtors

By this time of the year, you must know who owes your company money and how you intend to recover those unpaid debts. Have a list of creditors prepared and send out the necessary reminders and letters of demand.

Start the process of recovering monies before the New Year. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to collect these debts.

For those creditors who, for whatever reason cannot pay you in full, it would be advisable to speak to them about an instalment plan and get a settlement agreement drafted to confirm the instalment terms. If possible collect post-dated cheques.

4. Employment Contracts

It is pivotal for you to know what your exposure as a company or business in an employment dispute. It is also important for you to know the processes and procedures that you need to carry out before you terminate a belligerent employee.

It is prudent that you have an Employment Handbook prepared and served on all your employees.

This year alone there have been a lot of discussion on the need for change to our employment laws in particular, to laws covering sexual harassment at work, maternity and paternity leave, data protection and personal information.

5. Intellectual Property

Whatever industry you’re in, it is prudent to consider registering your trademark and tradename. As your business gains popularity and people start recognising your brand and name, it is inevitable that a competitor may want to benefit from your goodwill to gain some traction.

You do not want a competitor to proceed to use your name and logo in a similar industry and reap the benefits and goodwill off your hard work.

Please do consider securing your intellectual property rights. It makes it easier for you to enforce your rights when you have the requisite trademarks being registered.

6. Written Contracts and Agreements

Always have your written contracts and agreements revised and up to date. Review the terms of your Purchase Orders, Invoices, Supplier Contracts, Equipment/ Machinery Leases, Rental Agreements.

It is important that at all material times, you are aware of your key suppliers and key customers. Review these contracts and agreement as there may be renewal clauses in those contracts that may have slipped your mind, which could cause you undue losses.

7. Train Your Staff

Always train your staff to be aware of what type of legal documents to look out for. For example, a Winding up Notice that is served on your registered address needs to be brought to the immediate attention of the Board of Directors, as there are dire repercussions of not responding to the said Notice within the statutory imposed period of time.

Conclusion

There is no such thing as a ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to legal matters. You will need to design your own Legal Health Check which is suitable for your own business or company.

Like a well-tended garden, you will need to constantly prune, remove and regrow your legal structures to ensure that it is in perfect order.

Always remember that a detailed examination of these key areas will help you identify any danger or grey areas which will then enable you to circumvent or reduce any potential risks and liabilities to your business.

About the author

SHARMILA RAVENDRAN is the founder of the law firm, Messrs Ravindran located in Mont Kiara, Kuala Lumpur. She has more than 14 years of experience in the legal industry servicing clients that include local and foreign companies. She is now actively involved in corporate advisory work and commercial litigation and is a Panel Adjudicator with the Kuala Lumpur Regional Centre for Arbitration. She also sits on the Bar Council Child Rights Committee and is the Legal Director for Lean in Malaysia. She can be contacted at sharm@ravindran.com.my.                                                                                                                                            

Investment scams involve promises of big payouts, quick money or guaranteed high returns. In this part of the world where I live and work, investment scams in the forms of Ponzi and pyramid schemes are getting increasingly common.

Ladies and gentlemen, investment scammers are so convincing. You know who they are actually targeting. Have you lost your job because of COVID-19? Are you desperate for money? Are you a victim of one scam and looking to recover your lost money? With so much debt, what are you going to do?

According to Investopedia, with Ponzi schemes, investors give money to a portfolio manager. Then, when they want their money back, they are paid out with the incoming funds contributed by later investors. With a pyramid scheme, the initial schemer recruits other investors who in turn recruit other investors and so on. Late-joining investors pay the person who recruited them for the right to participate or perhaps sell a certain product.

Over the years, even highly intelligent and educated people who do not understand how things work have been ruined by investment schemes that turned out to be fraudulent. Unbelievable?

All investment scams will eventually collapse. There were cases where the company disappeared with investor funds, or scammers claiming to be “fund managers”, advertising in the social media, collecting money from people, without any proper fund structures. This is all very concerning, because it creates a poor image for the industry in general.

Some of these pitches are so convincing that even I take a look from time to time and the entry cost levels are so low. It is time to give myself a slap. What have I been smoking all these years? I must have been one of the biggest idiots in the world not knowing that making money can be that easy.

Sweet! Some people know what they are doing. Over the years, I have come across people who do not mind investing in any investment scams as long as they are giving them high returns. I have heard before of people quitting their proper jobs or businesses to focus on their investment scams. They took the “bait”, got their capital back and recruited others to join the gravy train. There is no feeling of guilt, no responsibility involved whatsoever for them.

They will compromise moral values and ethics for money. They always look for loopholes to overcome the rules and regulations that have been put into place to protect the system. This is how terribly low our modern society has become. Yeah, not everyone can be rich. Why should not everyone be able to earn money so, so, and so easily? 

As long as any investment scams which claims to invest or trade in anything from forex to cryptos are expanding at a healthy rate, their “fund managers” are able to keep the fraud going. Once investments begin to contract, then the house of cards collapses.

A fake investment can go on for months or even years as long as it is able to suck in more investors or suckers. You will be able to see the profits you have made on a webpage or an app.

According to Dr. Stephen Greenspan, the University of Connecticut psychology professor who is also an internationally known authority on Ponzi schemes, the basic mechanism explaining the success of Ponzi schemes is the tendency of humans to model their actions (especially when dealing with matters they do not fully understand) on the behavior of other humans.

This mechanism has been termed “irrational exuberance,” a phrase attributed to former Federal Reserve’s chairman Alan Greenspan (no relation), but actually coined by another economist, Robert J. Schiller. Schiller employs a social psychological explanation that he terms the “feedback loop theory of investor bubbles.”

The fact that so many people seem to be making big profits on the investment, and telling others about their good fortune, makes the investment seem safe and too good to pass up. In Schiller’s words, the fact “that others have made a lot of money appears to many people as the most persuasive evidence in support of the investment story associated with the Ponzi scheme.

While social feedback loops are an obvious contributor to understanding the success of Ponzi and other mass financial manias, there are four factors which can be used to understand acts of gullibility and also other forms of what Dr. Stephen terms as “foolish action.” The factors are situation, cognition, personality and emotion. Obviously, individuals differ in the weights affecting any given gullible act.

Situations. Assuming that the decision to proceed would be a very risky and thus foolish act, a gullible behavior is more likely to occur if the social and other situational pressures are strong and less likely to occur if the social and other situational pressures are weak, or balanced by countervailing pressures (such as having wise heads to warn you).

Cognition. Gullibility can be considered as a form of stupidity, so it is safe to assume that deficiencies in knowledge and/or clear thinking often are implicated in a gullible act. By terming this factor “cognition” rather than intelligence, one can have a high IQ and still prove gullible.

Personality. Gullibility is sometimes equated with trust and niceness leading to impulsive decision-making, but the late psychologist Julian Rotter showed that not all highly trusting people are gullible.

Emotion. Emotion enters into virtually every gullible act. In the case of investment in a Ponzi scheme, the emotion that motivates gullible behavior is a strong wish to increase and protect one’s wealth.

About the author

YH Wong has over two decades of experience in the financial services industry. His clients include high net worth investors and boutique institutions such as family offices and investment partnerships in the region. He is currently a senior partner with Satori Consultancy Ltd, a financial services company regulated by the Mauritian Financial Services Commission. He can be reached at yhwong@satoriconsultancy.com.

As a lawyer who has had the opportunity to represent and defend different types of clientele; from medium to large scale businesses, corporations and high net worth individuals, I am occasionally confronted with the odd client who would retort, “This is a pretty standard contract, right? So why do we need to review it? Just sign!” or “Why do we need to take so long to look into this joint venture agreement? Isn’t this pretty much a standard contract?” or worst still “Can you give me a discount since it’s a standard contract!”

In my 15 years of legal experience, I have never come across two contracts that are exactly the same. I have never given any of my clients “standard” contracts because no such thing exists in my books.

Contracts should be crafted according to the particular and specific requirements, needs and requests of the parties involved.

It is always good to remember that contracts once entered into and signed are binding on the signatories. You can’t plead ignorance nor can you say that you did not understand the terms of the contract or that you did not foresee the consequences of breach or non-compliance.

Unless of course you were coerced, forced or unduly influenced into signing the said contract. However, do take note that the threshold of proof for coercion and undue influence is one that is high and onerous.

Oftentimes clients, in a bid to save on legal cost, use “standard” contract templates that they obtain from the Internet. You are forewarned here that doing so and not reviewing the specific terms can lead to devastating legal repercussions.

Let me give you some examples of matters that are not covered in these template contracts that you find on the Internet.

“Jurisdiction” Clauses

The laws applicable in any other country will not be applicable here in Malaysia. This clause is extremely important if you are contracting with a foreign party.

For example, if you are entering into a contract with a party from Singapore but the subject matter of the contract, for example the sale of a factory in Malaysia and the governing laws are Singapore, you will be faced with difficulty in the event litigation arises.

If you have an incompatible or inconsistent clause in your agreement, it will make the litigation process rather cumbersome and costly for you. The issue of jurisdiction will have to be dealt with before the substantive issues of fact and law can be addressed.

This is an unduly protracted and costly affair.

The Appropriate “Governing Laws”

Oftentimes when you use a standard contract, no one looks at the ‘Governing Laws’ clause.

There is a huge difference between the arbitration process and laws as compared to the Court process. Arbitration is an excellent alternative to litigation but if the value of your contract is small and the subject matter of the dispute is straightforward, then the cost of the arbitration process may exceed the value of your claim in itself. 

Do not attempt to deal with governing laws and jurisdiction in the same wording. The two concepts are different and the contract should address them separately.

Conflicting Clauses

Let’s assume two people enter into a contract which contains Clause (1) and Clause (2). Further let’s suppose that the two clauses do not contradict one another yet come into conflict with each other. For example:

This contract shall only be terminated upon mutual agreement by both parties

Clause (1)

This contract may be terminated at any time upon written notice to the other party

Clause (2)

Clearly both these clauses can be in conflict with one another. Conflicting clauses are one of the most commonly litigated contractual disputes in Malaysia. 

Once there are conflicting clauses, the Courts will then have to resolve the conflict by interpreting and “making sense” of the contract by reading all of the contractual documents in context and also consider parties’ commercial intentions by way of oral evidence in Court.

It is worthy to remember that not all standard contracts are advantageous. A standard contract may not capture the specific needs and circumstances of your business, and therefore not protect you from risks. On the contrary a badly drafted standard contract that you glean off the internet can cause more damage than benefit to you.

Always remember that there is no such thing as a standard contract. You are entitled to negotiate the terms of a contract you wish to enter into based on your own circumstances and facts. Investing in good legal and professional advice will reduce risk and save you a lot of legal cost in the long run.

Lawyer’s fees may seem expensive when you voluntarily decide to hire them initially but it is wise to remember that lawyers become more expensive when you have no choice but to hire them just because you decided not to in the first place.

This article was written by Sharmila Ravindran