As if life wasn't tough enough for Pacific Basin Shipping - the dry cargo shipowner saw the Baltic Dry Index slump to its lowest quarterly average since 1986 earlier this year, and now has to put up with greedy shareholders. In a scene reminiscent of early MTR Corp annual general meetings, one shareholder at Pacific Basin's AGM opened their bag and swiped all the small capsules of coffee being readied for thirsty participants. While the shareholder's action left Pacific Basin staff astonished, its catering company at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum managed to find limited extra supplies before parched journalists arrived.
There were unfortunate scenes at MTR Corp AGMs many years ago, with shareholders filling their bags with food and refreshments and disappearing before proceedings had even started. The MTR subsequently stopped the practice and there were a lot of disgruntled shareholders the first year they found there were no spoils.
Multibillionaire George Soros has had the unusual opportunity of reading his obituary. This came courtesy of a slip by Reuters, which accidentally published a pre-written obituary. He may not have been too pleased to read, on his first morning in paradise, "George Soros, who died XXX at age XXX, was a predatory and hugely successful financier and investor, who argued paradoxically for years against the same sort of free-wheeling capitalism that made him billions." It would be an understatement to say that the 1,122-word piece was not especially kind to Soros. Indeed, the website Slate described it "as a remarkably ungenerous assessment". The Slate piece went on to say that there was nothing paradoxical about Soros' wealth and political views. He was acutely aware that he would not have been able to do it outside of the institutions of liberal democracies, and "entire philanthropic career has been dedicated to bolstering and spreading those institutions". We can report that the old boy is still alive and that Reuters has apologised for the error.