HONG KONG'S very own Philadelphia case, a film which won Tom Hanks an Oscar for his portrayal of a man who lost his job because he was HIV-positive, has ended in smiles and a rich court settlement for Joe Silk.
Mr Silk was ousted from Overseas Financial Services, the company he helped to build, in a blaze of controversy last year. His HIV-positive condition was used as a weapon to wrestle control of the company by his then business partner Kevin Mudd. We hear that Mr Silk (left) received a major settlement after a British court delivered a judgment in his favour last week.
A party was thrown to celebrate the victory and the financial adviser was said to be cock-a-hoop with the spoils of his success. The size of the settlement is not known and according to its terms Mr Silk is barred from talking on the subject. Mr Silk had been suing Mr Mudd for breach of contract and recompense for the 49 per cent of the company he claimed he was entitled to.
''BATTEN down the hatches and sell bank stocks'' was the advice swirling around certain quarters of Exchange Square last Friday. For sure, everyone knew that the results posted by the Bank of East Asia were a dog's dinner but in these fearful times it doesn't take much to set the doomsters off.
We find this business of banks on the edge of implosion as mortgage lending collapses and lending spreads shrink a bit difficult to stomach. If it wasn't about to happen a couple of weeks ago why is the picture so different now? To revise the Hong Kong banking sector's interim profit growth figures down on the back of one bank's mercurial reporting habit is rich even by the standards of this town's market analysts.
