Dyer & Despair: No Dinero’s in my Sombrero’s
I must say, BDAfrica is becoming one of my favorite reads (who edits that newspaper? they deserve a big clap for doing a good job with their reporting).
So, they have another interesting story about this guy called John Kiarie who is suing Dyer & Blair, claiming that they did not give him a return on his investment that they had promised (read story here: Stock Brokers creed: A man is a client until proven broke).
Based on what I’ve read, this guy Kiarie has a weak case. He said he expected Die & Declare Dyer & Blair to triple his Ksh91.5 million shilling investment to an amount of about Ksh 450 million, over the course of five years. However, all he got, when he finally decided to withdraw his money was an interest payment of Ksh. 2 million. The full original amount of Ksh 91.5 million was returned to him (he should thank his lucky stars for that!).
The article describes Mr. Kiarie as a former employee of the Kenya Commercial Bank. How do you “acquire” Ksh.100 million as a regular employee of a bank? hmmm…(unless of course, he made this money from other business ventures that were not mentioned in the article?).
Anyway, Dyer & Blair is essentially saying that it made no guarantee’s in it’s contract and this man should have been aware of that. When it comes to investing, you can either lose money or make money (these are the risks you take and the risks you should be prepared for).
If I was this guy, I’d just move on. He got his entire original investment back (which is rare) and he should just walk away (without having to spend additional money on corrupt lawyers) and then, he should either go to a different company that can do a better job for him or he needs to learn how to invest on his own.
I’m sure there’s a lot of insider trading sheenanigans taking place in Kenya. I used to have an uncle who worked for the central bank when buying and selling treasurey bonds was popular and he would call up all his friends and tell them way ahead of time when to buy and when to sell and a lot of them made a killing trading on this insider information).
I’m sure this Kiarie guy was probably hoping that Jimnah’s Mbaru’s inside “connections” with all these companies would be used to help increase the investment portfolio’s of Dyer’s clients, but that didn’t happen.
Does anyone here believe that the “investment” game in Kenya is based on fundamental or technical analysis?
Do you believe that the people at these investment banks or at these stock brokerage companies actually know what’s going on {fundamentally} with any of these companies? I think the big time “winners” are largely trading on insider information and the suckers are just riding the wave and hopefully, they’ll be able to cash out before it burns.
Discuss the dangers of trading in a stock market that sits in the middle of a developing country where the rules are still quite lax.
Let’s talk about John Kiarie’s predicament. Would you leave $100k to some portfolio manager in New York for 5 years without even checking the returns annually? The guy is a muppet.
Moving on to insider trading. Of course it goes on. However, insider trading is common in every stock market (snippet from the UK’s FSA http://search.ft.com/ftArticle.....&ct=0).
A good investor needs to invest based on fundamentals because ultimately that is what will make a stock grow. Even in Kenya.
Walk away? The stock market has grown over 500% in the last few. Even assume they just invested in bonds 7% return per year, he deserved at least 31Million.
where he got his money from i don’t think is anyone’s business unless proved that it was from fraudulent activities.
There was professional negligence on the part of D & Y. If it was in the days of the tumbling economy maybe. But 2M is a shortchange, i think he should ruthlessly go after them and lawyers need a new area of practice, that could be the goldmine. Shortchanged Investors
. I don’t know why everyone puts all lawyers in the “corrupt” group.
girlinthemeadow:
I don’t think there was negligence. In fact, what Kiarie is arguing is that they did not exercise “due diligence”, which really means that he is accusing D&B of “not looking out for the best interests” of their client.
However, they are no guarantee’s when you invest in stocks. He got all his money back and he should be grateful for that. What he needs to do is acquire the necessary knowledge that will allow him to manage and grow his money on his own.