金融雲端：「屍」有化之路 丘亦生
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GS(14)@2013-04-13 16:36:18http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/financeestate/art/20130412/18225509
戴卓爾夫人逝世，其歷史功過的評論汗牛充棟，各大名家空群而出，多到無法看得完，但昨日吸引我眼球的，反而是專業財經雜誌《Finance Asia》編輯Nick Ferguson一篇文章，是關於他與父親的故事，而這個故事是發生於鐵娘子大力推動的私有化浪潮背景下。
Ferguson的父親是老牌電訊公司英國大東的工程師，負責鋪設海底電纜，經常要駐外地，那時約10歲的Ferguson，隨着父親周遊列國，時而居於夏威夷，時而落戶西班牙，當時大東福利好，連學費及稅務都有津貼。
港人對英國大東不會陌生，它曾經是香港電訊的大股東，在港獨市經營固網及長途電話，除了香港外，其電訊王國遍佈澳門以致多個海外市場，一度是賺錢機器。
戴卓爾夫人上台後，力sell私有化的好處，以全民皆股的概念，游說工人接受，做公司的主人翁。當時工人以為，私有化既可分得股份，又有助公司籌集新資金，提升設備及投資於新業務，甚至會增加職位。
英國大東由盛轉衰
成立於1860年的英國大東，由於業務大多不在英國本土，政治阻力最低，所以是首批被鐵娘子私有化的公司，在1983年上市，Ferguson的爸爸因此也分得股份。
私有化後，擺脫了政府的羈絆，大東開始削減成本，他爸爸過去享受的駐外津貼被削，Ferguson一家不能再跟隨外派的爸爸，要分隔兩地。同時間，管理層卻在大加酬金及股息，這些舉措確實令股價有一定起色，但管理層越來越心雄，開始追逐潮流，在科網熱潮下把自己包裝成一隻科網股，大肆搞互聯網骨幹網（internet backbone）基建，把其他業務陸續出售，其中世紀大刁便是把香港電訊出售予李澤楷的盈科數碼動力，以換取電訊盈科（008）的股份。當時，Ferguson爸爸已經退休，手上的大東股份，仍然給他一個夢。
撤出香港證明是一子錯，亦決定了英國大東往後的坎坷，手上的電盈股份固然隨着科網泡沫爆破而大貶值，賣掉其他尚有「錢」景的流動通訊業務，一注獨贏互聯網光纜骨幹，更加是嫌命長。在眾多電訊公司爭相投資下，光纜基建嚴重供過於求，此後十年，大東在債務纏身下苦苦支撐，市值大萎縮，要不斷沽售家當自保，但管理層卻照加薪如儀，引發股東連番聲討。
內外交迫，大東老態畢呈，早幾年分拆澳門及加勒比海等四個小市場的業務上市，餘下的本業去年被Vodafone以10億英鎊吞併，本月1日正式在倫敦交易所退市。至此，大東的電訊王國完全瓦解，成為昔日不會放在眼內的Vodafone的一個小分支。
英國大東作為戴卓爾夫人私有化實驗的先驅，不算是一個成功的例子，鐵娘子向員工承諾的美好前景，最終也沒有兌現。當然，我無法知道，大東當年若沒有私有化，遭遇會否較佳，可能仍然難敵新晉電訊商的挑戰，管理層或許不會那麼冒進趕潮流，其沒落之路可能因而押後也說不定。
員工消費者未必受惠
我引用大東的經驗，不是要說明私有化失敗的必然。事實上，當年眾多國企被私有化，相當於英國版的國退民進，這是我一向贊成的，但要緊記，私有化不會保證自立的企業一定成功，有時甚至會加快滅亡。諾貝爾經濟學獎得主Joseph Stiglitz亦指出，國企私有化的失敗例子不在少數，而且不是所有行業的國企都適宜私有化。
近年不少對歐洲私有化的實證研究指出，私有化初期失業率大多上升，要到私有化一段時間後，產量有所增加，才對就業有些許幫助。不過，確實有證據顯示，國企私有化後不論在銷售額、盈利能力及效率方面均有明顯增長，而負債亦下降，但實際原因是因為私有化，還是因為缺乏競爭或放寬監管等因素，卻未有定論，而研究亦發現，這些增長帶來的全部財務回報，大多由管理層及股東攫取，消費者及政府反要蒙受損失，而說好了的服務減費，往往不會兌現。
私有化的另一贏家，是幫助一眾國企上市的銀行，私有化浪潮為他們帶來大量投行生意，直接推動當地金融業的發展，配合大肆解除監管的金融大爆炸，倫敦金融業由此升呢到另一台階。
說到底，私有化不會解決所有問題，也會帶來另一些風險，它對提升效率肯定有幫助，但成果未必各方都可以雨露均霑，員工、政府或消費者甚至有機會要蝕底。Ferguson是專門報道金融市場的財經記者，我相信他也篤信市場機制，但從大局看是一回事，親身被這股浪潮捲着走，又是另一回事，他對私有化，肯定有百般滋味。
丘亦生
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GS(14)@2013-04-13 16:37:27http://www.financeasia.com/News/339230,thatchers-privatisation-legacy.aspx
Thatcher's privatisation legacy
How the promise of increased British competitiveness and greater prosperity has not materialised, and why I didn’t get to grow up in Hawaii.
By Nick Ferguson | 11 April 2013
Keywords: margaret thatcher | privatisation | cable & wireless | pccw
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I was 10 when the company my dad worked for became one of the first state-owned firms privatised under Margaret Thatcher.
Cable & Wireless was one of those venerable old bastions of empire, tracing its origins back to the dawn of the telegraph. In one form or another, the company had been operating a global communications business since 1860 — until it ceased to exist last year.
Of course, Cable & Wireless is just one example, but Thatcher herself repeatedly claimed to have diagnosed the ills of government planning through the lens of her father’s greengrocers in Lincolnshire. “There is no better course for understanding free-market economics than life in a corner shop,” she claimed.
That just about sums it up. At the core of Thatcher’s monetarist project was the parochial claim that the high inflation and low growth of the 1970s was entirely domestic in origin — the “British disease”. News of the oil crisis or the end of the gold standard or IMF-enforced austerity clearly didn’t make it to the Lincolnshire fruit-and-veg industry, and why would it?
My dad spent most of his career at Cable & Wireless, working as an engineer on the fleet of ships that strung thousands of miles of cables around the planet, connecting Britain to the far-flung corners of its former empire. Its assets included Hong Kong Telecom, as well as businesses in Japan, Singapore, South Africa and the Caribbean.
Thatcher came to power in 1979, having identified the solution to the country’s stagflation as public spending cuts and more austerity. Privatisation, she argued, would help to raise money for the public coffers and give managers the freedom to cut costs and re-invest the proceeds.
Brilliantly, she also managed to seduce workers into believing that it would hand the means of production to the people — a kind of “popular capitalism” that was so seductive it was adopted by governments around the world.
"It was taken as a matter of faith that financial gains would be invested in upgrading the enterprises once they were privatised, installing new machinery and hiring more labour to provide better service while increasing output at falling prices," writes Michael Hudson, a research professor of economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, the home of modern monetary theory, in a long essay on British privatisation. "Workers were invited to think of themselves as finance-capitalists-in-miniature, earning dividends and capital gains by investing their savings in the shares in these companies."
The big public utilities were the most controversial targets, while companies such as Cable & Wireless were low-hanging fruit — its assets were mostly outside the UK, few people had ever heard of it and its various businesses around the world were a potential goldmine. Even the sceptics raised few objections to its sale.
By the time of my dad’s last posting in the mid-1990s, to a repair ship that spent most of its time idling at port in Victoria, on Canada’s Vancouver Island, the company was still one of the biggest in the industry and its shares were worth about £5 — a steady increase from the IPO price of £1.68 in 1983 (after an initially rapid increase due to the mis-pricing that characterised most privatisations).
Most of the early profits came easily. Before privatisation, for example, the company had paid for our family to follow my dad around the world, first class. We lived in Hawaii twice and briefly in Spain. Taxes and school fees were also taken care of.
Freed from the constraints of the public sector, management cut costs after privatisation, transferring such allowances from their employees to themselves, in the form of dividends and salaries that were among the highest in the industry. But employees also owned shares, so there was still a wealth effect, at least for a while (and I’m sure my dad didn’t mind travelling the world without four kids in tow).
In retirement, he watched as executives turned the company into a dot.com bubble stock, selling profitable assets to pay rich prices for flimsy investments.
In Hong Kong, in 2000, I had a ringside seat for the very worst of those trades: the sale of Cable & Wireless’s lucrative stake in the local phone operator to Li Ka-shing’s son, Richard, in exchange for shares in his 10-month old startup, Pacific Century CyberWorks, which was valued at an irrationally exuberant $26 billion — making it bigger than Amazon at the time.
The deal was an almost immediate disaster for both companies, as was abundantly obvious even before the ink was dry. Indeed, this is what Cable & Wireless HKT’s board had to say as they recommended the deal to shareholders:
“The financial risk profile of HKT will change from that of a company with substantial cash reserves, little debt and a history of regular dividend payments, to being part of a group with significant debt and which is unlikely to be able to pay dividends in the foreseeable future.”
It also had a share price that was heading south in a hurry. And, as a result, so did Cable & Wireless. After briefly reaching £15, the company’s shares finally slumped below the IPO price in 2002 and never really recovered — though management continued to pay themselves millions anyway.
Vodafone bought what was left of the business last year for about £1 billion, after the Caribbean assets were spun off in 2010 and now go by the name Lime.
Her legacy will be debated for years to come, but one thing is sure: almost none of Thatcher’s promises came true. Workers did not become better off, unemployment never returned to the levels of the early 1970s, trade surpluses did not come to pass and utility bills did not get cheaper.
And I swapped life in Hawaii for the northeast of England. Thanks Maggie.
© Haymarket Media Limited. All rights reserved.
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GS(14)@2013-04-13 16:40:09http://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/finance/20121018/00202_056.html
九十年代收購源於政治
曾為港人熟悉的英國大東，過去曾經是英國在「日不落國年代」接通全球的通訊中樞，而被電盈收購前的香港電訊，更曾是英國大東的最主要盈利來源。
在九一年及九三年，英國大東先後向中信系內，出售百分之二十澳門電訊及百分之十二香港電訊股權，當時更認定是出於港澳回歸前過渡期的「政治婚姻」。而中信系在九十年代末，才開始涉足本港與海外的電訊投資，並輾轉發展為今日的中信國際電訊。
與當年持有香港電訊的英國大東不同，目前持有澳門電訊的大東電報（CWC），其實是大東於一○年分拆重組而來，大東當時決定投資於固網業務的CWC，與專注國際光纖業務大東環球（CWW）分拆成兩家完全獨立公司，CWC繼承「大東電報」的中文品牌，而CWW則已於今年七月被Vodafone（VOD）收購，並已成為VOD的全資公司。
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GS(14)@2013-04-13 16:44:51http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_%26_Wireless_Worldwide
Cable & Wireless Worldwide
http://www.bloomberg.com/article/2012-07-30/aPUvN4i0RVzg.html
好似7月已經除牌? 他們又搞錯?