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SCMP Reporter

VISA, the credit-card outfit, chose a bad day to announce it was trying to abolish cash yesterday.

   After all, it was the one day in the year when Li Ka-shing sort of meets his shareholders - he faces the TV cameras when Cheung Kong and Hutchison announce their profits.

   Mr Li was in a jaunty mood, possibly because his companies made a total profit of $16 billion - unless adjusted for some double counting - last year.

   This works out at about $2,600 for each person in Hong Kong, and means the average person works five days a year for K.S. and his companies.

   Still, he couldn't be accused of letting success run away with him yesterday.

   His headquarters in Central Building still has cranky lifts and his glasses still drop off the end of his nose if he starts waving his arms about.

   However, there are some truly beautiful artifacts in his office - superbly displayed jade stuff that we'll tell you more about in the unlikely event he lets us back in again next year.

   Cash dispenser  MEANWHILE, Visa is trying to rob the world of the hobby of coin collecting by coming up with its ''electronic purse'' - a sort of international super-deluxe version of the weird stuff on page three of yesterday's Post.

   The idea is that a microchip with built-in radio transmitter keeps track of your ''cash''.

   You can fill it up electronically from your bank account and then ''spend'' it by waving it in front of a special terminal when you buy things, anywhere from Tsuen Wan to Bermuda.

   The chip will be no bigger than the full stop at the end of the last sentence.

   Apart from Li Ka-shing's, of course, which would have to be the size of a telephone box.

   Shun Taktful  THERE appeared to be something missing from the statement that came with the results of Shun Tak Holdings.

   Jetfoils? Property? No, they were in. What received no mention was the little matter of the raid on Shun Tak's premises on December 14 last year by the Commercial Crime Bureau.

   Usually, firms will at least say ''our business has not been affected''. But not Shun Tak.

   Over at the offices of accountants Ferrier Hodgson and Marfan (FH&M), the report that triggered the raid is only a few weeks away from completion. The final two submissions have been received.

   The word is that it's going to be 800 pages long. Yes, eight hundred pages, dwarfing the 688 pages in the expurgated version of the Allied Report.

   No doubt some small furry animals in some forest are already packing their belongings into their suitcases before the chainsaws arrive.

   ChinTungSpeak  THE FH&M report covers transactions between 1990 and 1992 and the investigation, therefore, may very well touch on that amazing time in July 1990 when bouncing Alan Bond ended his days in Hong Kong by selling control of Bond Corp International to Stanley Ho Hung-sun's Tomson Pacific.

   Bondie's Australian flagship held 66 per cent of the shares, but Tomson only wanted to buy shares amounting to 34.5 per cent of the firm's share capital to avoid having to make a cash offer to all the other shareholders.

   So brokerage ChinTung Securities was brought in to dispose of the other 31.5 per cent, and was given just 28 days by the stock exchange to do so.

   A tall order, as ChinTung had to search for mugs to buy the shares at $2.25, when the market price of the firm - later renamed as World Trade Centre Group and later still as Top Glory - was below this level.

   Much to the surprise of many, enough buyers were found. Perhaps it was Raymond Lai, managing director of ChinTung, who managed to make it happen by speaking of the company as a ''a cash concept stock''.

   Sadly, those who bought the shares were looking at a nasty hole a few weeks later when the stock slipped to $1.50, and an even bigger one 12 months later when it was down to $1.

   A statement from ChinTung afterwards said that a fifth had gone to Taiwanese investors and the rest to Europe and Southeast Asia.

   Tally ho  THE latest quip about Jardines is that the Keswicks are going to have their cars registered in Bermuda.

   ''I would emphasise that this decision does not adversely affect other road users,'' said chairman Henry Keswick, while his limo, parked with impunity in the middle of Queen's Road Central, caused a mile-long traffic jam.

   And thank you to the fund manager who sent us the promotional material for the latest financial centre which will no doubt be bidding for Jardine's business.

   Yes, Somalia is the place to have your company these days, although the bit about attracting ''pompous old colonial twits seeking to roll the clock back a century'' is rather pointed.

   ''No experience requirements,'' the brochure states. Actually, this is only a minor advantage over Hong Kong.

  In the clouds  THE Royal Observatory has joined in the fun and issued one of those government performance pledges.

   ''We are committed to issuing no less than 24 hourly bulletins every day . . .'' it starts.

   At least 24 hourly bulletins? How many hourly bulletins is it possible to issue a day? 



Bad day for credit as Li's cash mountain grows