The company published its results on the stock exchange website at 6.30am yesterday thereby avoiding suspension for breaching the four-month deadline.

Despite the good-looking results which were up 23 per cent on last year, the market was not impressed with last week's kerfuffle which has effectively cost it 16 per cent of its value. At the close on Thursday it was trading at HK$8.78 compared with yesterday's HK$6.98 close.

The company's gross profit margin has remained remarkably flat since 2007 at about 52 per cent which, given the wild swings experienced in the sector for vegetable prices and fertiliser, has mystified some analysts.

Spoof capitalises on BA bungle

British Airways' mistake over the weekend, when it told passengers on one flight that the plane was about to crash into the North Sea, provided The Economist with an excuse to draw attention to its spoof piece on pre-flight announcements published some years ago.

'Your life jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove it now. In fact, do not bother to look for it at all. In the event of a landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero.

'This aircraft is equipped with inflatable slides that detach to form life rafts, not that it makes any difference. Please remove high-heeled shoes before using the slides. We might as well add that space helmets and anti-gravity belts should also be removed, since even to mention the use of the slides as rafts is to enter the realm of science fiction.'

It should be added this is not entirely true as history records one Ethiopian Airways wide-bodied plane ditching in the sea with the survival of 29 per cent of the passengers. As for narrow-bodied planes landing on water, there was the memorable US Airways' Airbus 320 that crashed into the Hudson River last year shortly after takeoff when all passengers survived, while a Garuda Boeing 737 landed in knee-deep water in 2002 with one fatality - a flight attendant.

Win a few, lose a few

We see that Japan's Coca-Cola West, a Coca-Cola bottler, has agreed to buy vegetable juice maker Q'sai Co for 35.9 billion yen (HK$3.3 billion) from Daiwa SMBC Capital, a private equity arm of Daiwa Securities and Polaris Capital Group.

Private equity groups, as you know, like to pride themselves on their ability to 'restructure' assets so as to extract maximum value for their shareholders.

However, something seems to have gone sadly wrong with this deal since Daiwa and Polaris originally bough Q'sai for the equivalent of HK$5.5 billion. That's a decline of some 40 per cent. Back to the monkey and the dartboard.

Ban an ill wind for casinos

Singaporeans are still struggling to come to terms with the new gambling demon in their midst.

One company was so alarmed by the whopping S$26 million (HK$149.38 million) loss racked up by a businessman recently at the Resorts World Casino that it has taken the highly unusual step of banning its senior management from gambling. The seven top managers of Second Chance Properties will be required to get themselves barred from Singapore's two casinos while they continue to work at the company.

Mohamed Salleh said companies could face problems with suppliers and bankers if people found out that a top executive had lost a large sum. 'If it's a listed company, shareholders will also get worried and dump the shares,' he said.

Could be nasty for the casinos if this idea catches on.

The luxury of freedom

We note that a number of hedge fund managers are growing weary of their onerous responsibilities and getting out of the business.

Richard Grubman, a top Boston manager, Soros protege Stanley Druckenmiller, Paolo Pellegrini, to name a few of the hedgie glitterati.

And why so?

It seems, reading between the lines that it is getting to be too much of a hassle. The New York Observer identifies several catalysts for hedge fund managers' decision to do nothing: they make loads of money, then have a bad year and can't be bothered to meet irritating investors; they get so big that it's no fun any more; or investors withdraw all their cash.

One former hedge fund manager, said to have achieved returns of 870 per cent in 2008, was reported as saying: 'Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the BlackBerry away and enjoy life.'

He can probably afford to be philosophical.