Date: October 13 & 14, 2010
Time: 9.00 am – 5.00 pm
Venue: Sunway Pyramid Convention Centre

Malaysia is rapidly heading towards an ageing society. According to United Nations’ figures, Malaysia is likely to reach an ageing nation status by 2035 with the number of people above the age of 60 reaching 15 per cent of the population. The United Nations categorises any country with 10 per cent of its population above the age of 60 as an ageing nation.

Today more than 10 percent of Malaysians are in the 50 yr + group. Global statistics show that this ageing group has greater purchasing power and wealth than younger adults. In the UK, EU and USA, the 50 yr + group commands more than 75 % of the wealth. It outspends younger adults by $1 trillion and accounts for more than half of the majority of household expenditure (54%) in the US and the EU.

Though FPAM has organized many conferences and expositions in the past, the “Everyone Can Retire Well” conference is FPAM’s first attempt on the rapidly growing aging and retirement markets. Planned for 700 participants as a gathering for the ageing and retirement industry/community, it aims to bring financial service providers, academicians, doctors, health care experts, gerontologists, affluent consumers, decision makers and government agencies together for 2-days of sharing and caring that we believe will have life-long impressions

Register by printing and faxing this form back to FPAM. (I’m surprised they didn’t have a registration form in the website itself…)

Thanks to Aniza from FPAM, here are some more relevant downloads for the upcoming conference:
1) Conference Brochure
2) Sponsorship Opportunities
3) Hotel Room Reservation

Just got this from FPAM…

This year’s most important conference on Islamic financial planning.

IFPC 2009 Malaysia – International Center for Islamic Wealth Management

Sign-up before 15 October and save RM200. Earn 10 CPE points from SIDC and 10 CE points from FPAM.

Details

Date: 9 & 10 November , Monday & Tuesday

Venue: Sime Darby Convention Centre, Kuala Lumpur

Fee:

i) Early Bird Special ??RM800 ( FPAM Member) , RM1000 (Public)
ii) Normal ??RM1000 ( FPAM Member) , RM1200 (Public)

Early Bird Special by 15 October 09

Conference background
The significant rise in the wealth of Islamic countries for the past four decades has provided tremendous opportunities of growth and expansion for the wealth management industry to manage the surplus funds in accordance with the Shariah principles. Interestingly, the growth in the Islamic wealth management industry comes not only from affluent Muslims who desire to see their wealth preserved and enhanced within the framework of Shariah law, but equally from non-Muslim who view this as an ethical mode of investment and diversification. This 2-day conference has been specifically designed to contribute to the development of Malaysia as an international centre for Islamic wealth management as well as to explore the opportunities, latest trends and developments in the Islamic financial planning and wealth management industry. This conference will enable participants to learn from key players and prominent speakers who will share with you some very thoughtful and sometimes very challenging ideas and experiences.

Speakers
Dato??Nik Ramlah Mahmood, Managing Director, Securities Commission

Shariffuddin Khalid, Director, Malaysia International Islamic Financial Centre

Shahrul Shahriman, Chief Officer, Private & Institutional Asset Management, Prudential Fund Management Bhd

Azman Ismail, Chief Executive Officer, Independent Islamic Financial Planners Sdn Bhd

Dr. Ismail Mohd @ Abu Hassan, Shariah Adviser, Mayban Islamic Berhad

Ali Abbas Zaidi, Managing Director and Head of Islamic Markets, Maybank Investment Bank

Gul Khan, Global Head of Wealth Management, HSBC Amanah

Samer Taki, Senior Vice President, Islamic Bank of Asia, Singapore

Badlisyah Abdul Ghani, Chief Executive Officer, CIMB Islamic

Zainal Izlan Zainal Abidin, Chief Executive Officer, i-VCAP Management Sdn Bhd

Zainudin Ishak, Chief Executive Officer, HSBC Amanah Takaful

Khaeruddin Ishak, CEO HSBC Amanah Takaful

Md Khairuddin Haji Arshad, General Manager, PIDM

Dato??Dr. Adnan Alias, Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer, Islamic Banking and Finance Institute Malaysia (IBFIM)

Dato??Zukri Samat, Managing Director, Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad

Datuk Kamaruzaman Che Mat, Chief Executive Officer, Bank Rakyat

Musa Abdul Malik, Chief Executive Officer, HSBC Amanah Malaysia Berhad

Mohd Nasiruddin Mohd Kamaruddin, Chief Operating Officer, Standard Chartered Saadiq Malaysia

For programme and registration form:
http://www.fpam.org.my/fpam/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/ifpc-brochure-8.pdf

Online registration available at: www.i-fpc.com

via Danavest.com

Petaling Jaya, 1 October 2009 ??Pacific Mutual Fund Bhd, one of the leading investment management companies in Malaysia, has announced the following income distributions for five of its Funds for their financial year/interim period ended 30 September 2009:

Pacific Premier Fund ??4.00 sen per unit
Pacific Income Fund ??3.30 sen per unit
Pacific Focus18 Fund ??3.00 sen per unit
Pacific Cash Fund ??0.38 sen per unit
Pacific Protected Islamic Cash Fund ??0.10 sen per unit

This translates to the following distribution yields for investors based on the net asset value (NAV) per unit of the respective Funds prior to the distribution:

Pacific Premier Fund ??5.58 %
Pacific Income Fund ??5.80 %
Pacific Focus18 Fund ??5.48 %
Pacific Cash Fund ??0.75 %
Pacific Protected Islamic Cash Fund ??0.10 %

??ur equity funds, the Pacific Premier Fund and Pacific Focus18 Fund, have achieved a total return of 24.70% and 11.91% respectively for the one-year period ended 29 September 2009, a decent achievement given the volatile market conditions both locally and abroad over the past year. In fact, our maiden fund, the Pacific Premier Fund, which has gone through three major economic and financial crises, inclusive of the Asian Financial Crisis and the Tech bust, still achieved a total return of 130.74% since its inception in 1995. This adds to our on-going testament and investment philosophy of consistent above-average performance over the long term,??says Gary Gan, General Manager, Business Development & Marketing of Pacific Mutual.

Gan continues, ??e are also proud that our balanced fund, the Pacific Income Fund, besides achieving a commendable total return of 98.53% since its inception in 2000, has also emerged as the best fund for the Malaysian Ringgit Balanced category at the Morningstar 2008 Fund Awards (Malaysia) this year.??r

??ur money market fund, the Pacific Cash Fund, has performed equally well in the past year achieving a total return of 3.14% for the one-year period ended 29 September 2009. The Pacific Protected Islamic Cash Fund has generated decent returns in spite of the very low interest rates scenario at the time it was launched earlier this year,??says Gan, adding that the consistent and stable performance over time, the hallmark of Pacific Mutual’s investment style, has made the regular income payouts possible and hence, benefiting the investors of the five Funds.

Pacific Mutual now manages a total of 21 Funds, including seven global Funds and three wholesale Funds. The Company also manages private mandate funds under its asset management business. As at end September 2009, Pacific Mutual manages RM1.83 billion on behalf of its unit trust investors and private mandate clients.

Been cleaning and battling the irritating IFRAME virus on a few blogs for the past few days. If you have been trying to access Meshio.com and was warned by your anti-virus program that Meshio.com is trying to infect your computer with a virus, the bad news is that it’s a valid threat, but rest assure that I am once again being sucked into the role of a system administrator doing my best to get rid of the virus.

Photo by Hello Naomi

For the record, I have cleaned the virus for the 2nd time on Meshio.com and for other blogs I’m running, up to as many as 5 times. So, do not be surprise to find Meshio.com compromised again. Sigh…the more doors you have, the higher the risk. Just when I thought I have closed up all the ‘doors’, the malware programs seems to be able to discover a new one and start creating a mess in the system once again. From the discussion with other webmasters, it seems that the most attractive entry points were the FTP client, a tool which is used to transfer files from your computer into the hosting server. If you think that your site has been compromised, here are some very relevant advice from Adrian on how you can up your defense against these malwares.

Change all FTP pwd immediately.

Download the whole site to hdd. do a scan using a special written files, remove it all infected files. replace it.

Do another scan on your website using this:… Read More

http://unmaskparasites.com/

Make sure all those who has FTP access to it, they are equipped with antivirus and updated virus db. Then only give them the new FTP pwd.

PS: if want the file i can ask my team engineer to email to you, we write in php.

And here’s another short anti-malware guide from Pin…

You might also like to take the following preventive measures to protect your website from malware:

1. Upgrade your Adobe Reader to the latest version
2. Install anti-virus software like Malwarebytes and Comodo
3. Use SFTP instead of FTP
4. Remove all malicious coding from your website
5. Upgrade to latest WordPress if you have a self-hosted Blog
6. Change your FTP password

I just cannot think of a really good reason why would anyone spend their leisure time engineering malicious programs to cut down the productivity of people they don’t even know, except for some boost to their ego.

Maybe there is really something sinister going on behind all these virus attacks after all.

There’s just so much similarity between these online viruses and the real-life ones (e.g. H1N1), all the anti-viral companies makes a huge profits from these ‘engineered’ outbreaks! The fear that was created by real-life viral pandemics would have easily justified policymakers all around the world to start mass vaccination on their citizens, in the name of containing the spread of the disease. Similarly, in the virtual world, anti-virus companies are laughing their ways to the banks each time an effective virus was set loose and infected millions of people’s computers worldwide.

Just think about it, why do the car manufacturers continue to churn out automobiles fueled by cartel-controlled petrol? There are already so many other alternatives available to replace petrol. Also, look at the disaster created by corporations that provided genetically-modified crops to Indian farmers, where the farmers are resorting to suicide due to their failing crops and their inability to pay the debts owing to these corporations which promised them lucrative yields. It’s a vicious and very profitable business model, a prevalent feature in any capitalistic economies.

I am all for businesses that are out to make profit. That’s the whole reason businesses are for anyway, but a business should never make profit by taking advantage of others.

And the new fund is now officially open for subscription.

And surprisingly, there’s a QUOTA for this fund, 50% for Bumi, 30% for Chinese, 15% for Indians and 5 % for other races. So much for ’1Malaysia’… If I had my say, I would call it the AS Quota Fund. At least it is not as misleading as ’1Malaysia’, which I interpreted it as every Malaysian has equal opportunities to buy into the fund.

(Business Times, 5th Aug 2009) The Amanah Saham 1Malaysia (AS 1Malaysia) unit trust starts selling today.

Malaysians aged 18 and above may subscribe for the units at RM1 each at Amanah Saham Nasional Bhd offices that provide a full range of services as well as the more than 1,600 agents, including Malayan Banking, CIMB Bank, RHB Bank and Pos Malaysia, nationwide.

The fund, with an approved fund size of RM10 billion, will be managed by state-owned investment fund manager Permodalan Nasional Bhd.

The public can invest in at least 100 units. First-year students in public universities will each be given 100 units free.

There will be no maximum limit for investors. However, for 30 days from today, there will be a maximum investment limit of 50,000 units.

During this period, Malaysians aged 55 and above will get a special offer: they can buy as much as 100,000 units each.

It’s rather strange that PNB is opening up the quota which was reserved for Bumiputras to all Malaysians. Not that I have anything against this new policy. I just don’t remember PNB doing this in the past, during the good economic times.

This further confirms my suspicion that the government is in need a lot of cash. Remember, they’ve only just launched the Sukuk Simpanan Rakyat and declared new units simultaneously for ASW2020 and ASM earlier this year.

(Business Times) Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB) will offer the remaining 1.6 billion Amanah Saham Malaysia (ASM) units, including those initially set aside for bumiputras, for subscription by all Malaysians from July 21.

President and group chief executive Tan Sri Hamad Kama Piah Che Othman said to ensure a fair distribution to the public, a maximum limit of 20,000 units had been set per account holder during the offer period from July 21-27. The limit would be void after the offer period.

??hereafter, investors can subscribe for the ASM units without any maximum investment limit, depending on the amount of units left.

??ales of the additional ASM units are based on a first-come, first-served basis,??he told reporters here yesterday.

ASM is an equity-income fund aimed at providing unitholders with a long-term investment opportunity that generates regular and competitive returns through a diversified portfolio of investments.

According to Hamad, the remaining 1.6 billion ASM units are from the 3.33 billion units launched in April.

And to add to all my observations, our local share market has been acting rather against the regional tide, don’t you think?