Scared Donald may have bigger agenda in Davos
Good to see our chief executive Donald Tsang making it onto a world stage and sharing it with the likes of IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, Britain's finance minister George Osborne and Canada's central bank governor Mark Carney. And what did Donald tell the world? 'I've never been as scared as I am about the world.' They must have been wowed by that at Davos.
What was Donald doing there? Maybe he was using it to showcase his talents in the hope that some new job prospect will emerge, since his present job ends on June 30. He will be out of work, though, as one of the world's highest-paid leaders, not out of pocket. But what's next for him? Will he settle into genteel retirement in Hong Kong or join his brother on the board of New World or some other property company? Unlikely. We think Donald may have his eye on a directorship or two in a part of the world he may find more congenial, where people won't be taking unkind potshots at him. So we would not be surprised to see him hot-tailing it to London as fast he can once he's done here and dusting off that knighthood that's been lying around unused for so long.
Cathay's storm in a coffee pot
We are still feeling the irritation from Cathay Pacific's handling of the recent celebrity chef incident. Cathay agreed to pay out an astonishing HK$40,000 to Wong Wing-chee and his five travelling companions in addition to an upgrade for the chef. Cathay's initial offer of HK$10,000 was dismissed after Wong threatened to go to Apple Daily. A number of readers have expressed their annoyance at what they feel was a less than satisfactory response from Cathay when dealing with their complaints compared with the airline's meek handling of the celebrity chef's threats. A reader, who is a diamond Marco Polo club member and was travelling in business class, writes that during a flight from London to Hong Kong, a male flight attendant hit his son on the head with a coffee pot. 'When I e-mailed the incident to CX, they first ignored it. Then they offered my seven-year-old son air miles!' As many people have observed since the chef incident, he writes: 'We should have contacted Apple Daily.'
Wee New Year greetings
