Get-rich-quick 'Bitcoin Formula' exposed: Vincent Tan denies investing US$250m

 

Vincent Tan denies investing US$250m in get-rich-quick 'Formula'

PETALING JAYA: Berjaya Corp Bhd founder and executive chairman Tan Sri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun (<<pic) has denied investing US$250 million in a project known as "The Formula" which allegedly promises huge profits and quick riches.

Tan said in a statement today said that the 'The Formula' is supposedly a share trading platform that allows trades executed through it to beat the stock market with an accuracy of 80% thereby allowing users to make huge profits.

"I refer to a current online media entitled 'Vincent Tan gives back to the people with his latest project" wherein it is reported that I have invested US$250 million in a project known as "The Formula" with a wish to make Malaysians wealthy.

"I would like to categorically deny that I have made an investment in this project or that I am in any way involved in it and there is absolutely no truth in this report which I believe has been put out by unscrupulous persons to deceive the public," Tan said.

Tan has reported the matter to the relevant authorities so that appropriate action can be taken and urged the public to take caution on promises of quick riches and not to fall prey to scams.

Tan said this is not the first time his name has been used in similar instances for the purpose of lending credibility to online investment scams.

On June 28 (see below), Tan exposed a dubious startup trading platform called "Bitcoin Formula" which used his name and doctored photos to promote its business.

An article claiming he had invested in and was promoting Bitcoin Formula, together with some photographs, was circulated on social media.

The article was accompanied by a few photographs, one showing Tan allegedly awarding a cheque for RM500,000 to Bitcoin Formula for winning the "Project of the Year" prize in a computer engineering "hackathon" in Kuala Lumpur, and another picture of him apparently speaking about Bitcoin Formula at a social media business summit.

Both pictures were in fact images altered with the use of photo-editing software and had originally been taken by theSun in March 2014 and January last year.

A check with the Companies Commission of Malaysia found that no company by the name of Bitcoin Formula exists.

Credit:  Kevin Deva newsdesk@thesundaily.com

'Bitcoin Formula' exposed

This picture of Tan Sri Vincent Tan speaking at the Social Economic Forum at the GK Enchanted Farm in Bulacan in the Philippines was doctored to appear as if he was promoting Bitcoin Formula

PETALING JAYA: Berjaya group founder and executive chairman Tan Sri Vincent Tan has blown the whistle on a dubious startup trading platform called "Bitcoin Formula", which has used his name and doctored photos to promote its business.

It came to Tan's attention that an article claiming he had invested in and was promoting Bitcoin Formula, together with some photographs, was being circulated on social media after a friend who saw it asked him if it would indeed be a good investment.

"How can it be a good investment when the operators have to resort to such dishonest ways like using my name in fake reports and doctored photographs to promote their business?" he said.

"I think anyone who invests in such a shady business will surely lose their money," said Tan, who urged the public not to be deceived by such posts on social media.

The article about the company, that purports to promote blockchain and crypto technologies, claimed Tan had donated RM500,000 to Bitcoin Formula, a supposed financial startup by young computer engineers developing an efficient trading platform.

The article was accompanied by a few photographs, one showing Tan allegedly awarding a cheque for RM500,000 to Bitcoin Formula for winning the "Project of the Year" prize in a computer engineering "hackathon" in Kuala Lumpur, and another picture of him apparently speaking about Bitcoin Formula at a social business summit.

Both pictures were in fact images altered with the use of photo-editing software, and had originally been taken by theSun in March 2014 and January last year.

The cheque presentation photo was actually of Tan presenting a RM500,000 award to representatives of Dharma Master Cheng Yen of the Taiwan Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation after she was named Better Malaysia Foundation's Personality of the Year in 2015.

The other image was taken when Tan was speaking at the Social Economic Forum that was held at the GK Enchanted Farm in Bulacan, in the Philippines.

A check with the Companies Commission of Malaysia found that no company by the name of Bitcoin Formula exists.

Tan is apparently the latest prominent person whose name had been used by get-rich-quick scheme operators to scam unsuspecting people, and prominent tycoons like AirAsia founder Tan Sri Tony Fernandes and "Sugar King" Robert Kuok were among people whose names have been used by these scammers.

Tan also dismissed a Facebook article claiming that he will be donating RM525 million to Tabung Harapan Malaysia.

"There is absolutely no truth to either of these reports, that I believe have been put out by unscrupulous persons to deceive the public. I hope the public do not get fooled by these fake reports," he added.

Credit:   Amar Shah Mohsen newsdesk@thesundaily.com

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A need to invest in security

With the recent spate of attacks, robberies and snatch thefts, we really need to pay more attention to security issues – with emphasis on ‘pay’.

On Sunday, I visited a friend who was staying in a hotel along Old Klang Road in Petaling Jaya. At the time, there was another man in the room.

Minutes later, there was a knock on the door. A boy rushed in, breathless.

The other man in the room had left the boy and a couple of girls in his car while visiting the friend. Someone on a motor-cycle had knocked on the car window, asking for directions. And when they lowered the windows, the knives had come out.

The trio lost what little money they had, along with their handphones. They couldn’t even call to tell the guy about their problem. Thus, the dash to the hotel room.

Reality had hit close to home, even as we were talking about the recent spate of robberies in car parks and malls.

Call it a weird coincidence, but that hotel overlooks the scene of probably the most-publicised case of car park abduction and assault in the country. It was here, along Old Klang Road, that Canny Ong, after being abducted in Bangsar, was raped, murdered and torched in 2003.

And only last week, I had visited the Bangsar Shopping Centre from where she had been taken.

After the recent spate of robberies and attacks on women in malls and hypermarkets, I had wanted to see how much the security in the mall had improved. I must say I came away fairly impressed.

The car park was quite brightly lit, there were guards at both entrances and exits – and they were peering into the cars that were entering and leaving. I guess that’s to ensure no abduction ever takes place again.

There were a couple of guys on bikes, and a couple of others on bicycles. And yet another was walking from car to parked car, checking if all were secure. And the guy in the long-sleeved shirt slouched near the fire hydrant? He was the supervisor.

These were not your retired pakciks and uncles, trying make some extra money. They were Nepali army-trained personnel. They looked nice and smiled at everyone but one wrong move, and they can turn nasty. Really nasty, I am told.

Vincent Tan, the BSC asset and property management senior manager says they have 350 CCTV cameras covering all basements and floors.

They’ve also got dog units that patrol the area after dark. And if you are afraid to walk to your car at night, all you have to do is ask and the guards come along in buggies to take you to your vehicle.

More importantly, there are these blue pillars with panic buttons on them. You press the buttons, and the guards come running. They are even to be found in the ladies’ washrooms – the panic buttons, not the guards.

Of course, all that sounds good but I did have a couple of unanswered questions. Other malls are mulling ladies-only parking areas but I didn’t see any such markings there. There may be plans, though, says a friend who works there.

And how many people would know about the panic buttons? There is little by way of education.

I would have plastered notices of these measures all over the mall to make sure everyone would know what to do – and also tell the ladies to take note of the nearest blue column when they park. That way, they would know where to run when faced with an emergency.

It’s bad enough having nowhere to run when robbers hit you at home, or target the elderly, as they have been doing recently. Being robbed while out having retail therapy is hardly therapeutic.

I would think that security, indeed, is something worth investing in as far as malls and hypermarkets are concerned. After all, a mall that’s seen to be safe is likely to bring in the crowds and the paying customers. The key word, however, is “investing”.

Security guards, by and large, get paid pittance. And they have to throw their bodies in the line of fire. Guards in many factories and residential areas are paid as low as RM700 a month.

And in the malls, I am told, they may get RM900 to RM1,000. And I know of Myanmars who help out at hawker stalls and earn about RM2,000 a month!

Maybe we should be rethinking the value of the security guards. After all, if we expect them to lay their life on the line to save ours, we should be ready to pay a fair price.

After all, it’s also the price of our limbs and our lives.

Why Not? By D. RAJ

> The writer is dreaming of the day when we can have mall cops – friendly, well-paid policemen who ensure our security everywhere. But, for now, that remains a dream. 

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Make money from Facebook IPO!

Tan: How I made money from Facebook

By JAGDEV SINGH SIDHU jagdev@thestar.com.my

PETALING JAYA: For a man who does not have a Facebook account, Tan Sri Vincent Tan surely knows the value of the Internet giant.

“I may have one later,” quips Tan on opening an account but he will be counting the windfall from the 3.5 million shares his company, MOL Global Bhd, owns in Facebook once the company is listed on either the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq.

Based on an assumption that Facebook shares start trading at US$40 post-initial public offering, Tan’s MOL Global stands to pocket RM420mil for its shares.

Speaking to StarBizWeek, Tan recollects how he came about getting his hands on a tiny but valuable stake in Facebook.

Tan: ‘We don’t want to hold them for too long.’

 

Friendster was among the first social networking websites. It preceded MySpace and Facebook. Starting operations in 2003, Friendster found the going tough and lost money for years.

The company continued to raise but spent money aggressively. In running up losses, Friendster had, nonetheless, built up a base of 140 million registered users, of which 40 million were active.

Tan said the losses then stemmed from Friendster not monetising its user base. Finding it hard to make money from its users, it was losing an average of US$10mil a year.

Eventually, the patience of the owners and investors in Friendster wore thin and they wanted to exit the business. Friendster then called for a process to sell the business and now Friendster CEO, Ganesh Kumar Bangah, who was then working with Tan, informed him that Friendster was for sale.

“I asked for the numbers and found that 140 million registered users and 40 million active users was interesting. If we could make them spend some money, maybe Friendster would be a good investment. Of course, the downside was the business will continue to lose US$10mil a year,” he said.

Tan said the owners of Friendster initially wanted US$100mil for the business but with losses mounting, he knew no one would pay that much for the company. “At that time, Facebook wanted to buy Friendster’s patents but Facebook was willing to pay US$10mil cash and later increased it to US$20mil cash.”

Tan was made to understand then that the owners felt that taking US$20mil only to lose US$10mil a year will soon see that cash vanish and then decided to accept US$40mil for Friendster but wanted a quick sale. “They gave the potential buyers about a week to decide. Many people were looking, including large firms from China and Japan, at Friendster.



“They were much larger than MOL but with the owners of Friendster needing a fast sale, I told Ganesh to do a quick due diligence on Friendster.

“We took two days for the due diligence and made a bid. We said since Friendster owed people US$2mil, we offered US$38mil.

“With other potential buyers doing their due diligence, I told them that if they accepted US$38mil, we will do the deal right away. They accepted our proposal,” said Tan.

After buying Friendster in 2008, Tan then turned his attention to Facebook, which remained interested in Friendster’s patents and whose offer of US$20mil cash for the technology rights was still on the table. “We had a conference call with the people at Facebook. I accepted their price but I wanted shares.”

Facebook officials told him that Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook, did not want to dilute the shares in the company but Tan stood firm and said “if there was no shares, forget it”.

Tan insisted on getting shares in Facebook because he felt the company will be big in the future. Finally, Zuckerberg agreed to a share exchange for the patents and Tan got his 700,000 shares. His shares have grown to 3.5 million following a 5-for-1 split in Facebook’s shares before the IPO process.

Tan did not leave Friendster to languish but devised a plan to get the social networking website to breakeven point. He closed the US, Singapore and Australia offices to cut cost and began rebuilding the company.

This year, Friendster has stopped the bleeding and Tan felt the company has become “quite valuable”.

“The number of active users on Friendster has fallen from 40 million to four million but these four million spend money with us. We put games and all kind of things on the website and they spend money. If they didn’t, we cannot monetise the business,” he said.

Potentially, Tan values his Internet business at around RM1bil. It does business in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and India and is trying to get into Vietnam and many other countries.

MOL makes money from points people buy to play online games. It is also a payments gateway and is a payment partner for Facebook and Zynga, which is the creator of the hugely popular Farmville.

Tan said business models employed by companies such as Zynga, instead of relying on advertising revenue, was how large sums of money can be made from the Internet.

“People play and buy cows and tractors for their game. It’s amazing why people pay so much for that and I cannot imagine it.

“I tell my kids ‘you don’t play Farmville. If you want to farm, you can go to Bukit Tinggi. I will give you a real farm’,” he laughs.

Will he hold or sell his Facebook shares?

“We will see where it goes,” said Tan. “We will probably sell them for our business. We don’t want to hold them for too long but will see where the shares go after the IPO.”

At any price, the Facebook shares Tan owns has been hugely rewarding and the profit from the shares means the Friendster acquisition was paid for plus a lot extra profit on the side. “We were lucky,” he said.

So where does this investment rank among the many that Tan has executed in his corporate life?

“It’s one of the good ones but none can beat DiGi,” he said. “DiGi was my best investment and I should have stayed with it. I sold when DiGi had a market capitalisation of RM5bil to RM6bil. Today, the company is worth some RM31bil.

“That’s the big one that got away,” he lamented.

Vincent Tan awaits Facebook IPO windfall

By CHOONG EN HAN han@thestar.com.my

 His stake in the social networking service company may be worth RM420m

PETALING JAYA: Tan Sri Vincent Tan is definitely going to “like” the much anticipated Facebook Inc initial public offering (IPO) as his stake in the world's largest social networking service company could be worth as much as RM420mil.

MOL Global Bhd, which is controlled by Tan, is said to have 3.5 million shares in Facebook and assuming the IPO price is set at US$40 a piece, this would translate to US$140mil (RM420mil), and even more after the listing. sources said.

However, the amount is still an estimated value as Facebook has yet to reveal its share price information and its valuation is still speculative.

Facebook has been discussing raising as much as US$10bil, making the IPO the biggest Internet or technology IPO the market has ever seen.

“With the outstanding shares of Facebook of about 1.88 billion, the stake of MOL does not even come close to 1%,” said the source.

Given the share base of Facebook, MOL Global's stake represents about 0.19% of the social networking service.

MOL Global is currently the payment partner for Facebook, as well as with game developer Zynga, which made its name through popular social games such as Farmville.

MOL Global first got its hands on the stake in Facebook in 2010 when it sold off the patents of Friendster, the world's first social networking site, to Facebook.

As part of the deal, it received 700,000 shares in Facebook which subsequently increased to 3.5 million shares last year after Facebook initiated a 5-for-1 split of the company's shares.

MOL Global made global headlines when it acquired Friendster for US$39mil in 2008, after winning the bid in an open tender against Chinese game and instant messaging company Tencent and other bidders.

According to regulatory filings for the US IPO, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg currently has a 28.4% stake in his company, with about 533.8 million shares.

The company said it conducted its own valuation of its stock at the end of each quarter, and as of Dec 31, it had determined its shares to be worth US$29.73 a piece.

In 2011, Facebook pocketed about US$1bil on a revenue of US$3.7bil with over 845 million monthly active users. In 2010, it made US$606mil.

The company's main revenue are derived from advertising, while another US$557mil came from payments, with most of the non-advertising funds coming from social-gaming partner Zynga.

M'sians to benefit from facebook IPO windfall

A FEW weeks ago, the fortunes of 70 households in an isolated farming village in Spain changed forever.
Initially the residents of Sodeto wanted to give Spain's huge Christmas lottery, known as El Gordo, a miss, because they were facing tough times due to the economic downturn and a severe drought.

But they bought tickets anyway out of loyalty to the homemakers' association and they hit the jackpot. Some of the farmers and unemployed people became instant millionaires.

Everyone in town had a share except for one man, who was apparently overlooked. Sadly, he will never find out what it takes to make a bet.

That brings me to the topic of Facebook.

Facebook is a social networking company that has changed the lives of many, and perhaps, destroyed some too. But who would have thought that Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates could have created such a company way back in 2004 that could be raking revenues of more than US$3.7bil today.

Facebook started as a site that allowed students to interact via the Web, but later made accessible to everyone, thereby intensifying competition with sites such as MySpace and Friendster, founded two years before.

Going public: A ‘like’ sign is seen at the main entrance of Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Zuckerberg (inset) says the scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented — AFP

Eight years later, it is going for a listing on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq. The company is considering a valuation of US$75bil to US$100bil. Going forward, its biggest challenge is about keeping the advertising momentum because advertising is its key source of revenue.

Today, Facebook has over 800 million users and the numbers are growing every day because Facebook has created enough buzz that even a seven-year-old or a 60-year-old wants to get connected on Facebook.

Out of all this buzz, who would have thought that a Malaysian company MOL Global Ltd would have something to cheer about as Facebook goes for listing.

This smallish company is making headlines like never before.

MOL Global is majority owned by billionaire Tan Sri Vincent Tan and MOL group CEO Ganesh Kumar Bangah holds just over 10% in the company.

Tan is a well-known billionaire who has made a lot of bets, some have made him richer, others just fizzled out. Today, his empire spans across several sectors and several countries and he continues to make more bets to expand it further.

The story of MOL Global began in 2000, during the dot.com era.

He bought over his brother Tan Sri Danny Tan's company, Dijaya Corp, and renamed it MOL.Com Bhd. Like a venture capitalist, he invested in over 30 Internet companies, including Bangah's MOL Access. Of the 30, perhaps two or three grew.

MOL Access is involved in online games and was subsequently listed on the Mesdaq board in 2003, but privatised in 2008.

In late 2009, MOL.Com bought over Friendster for US$39mil and, in the same year, MOL Global was set up in Singapore. Today MOL Global owns Friendster and the MOL Access Portal.

In July 2010, Facebook forged a partnership with MOL Global for the patents of Friendster. For that, MOL Global received 700,000 shares in Facebook stock and that explains why it has a stake in Facebook.

Today, MOL Global's stake could be potentially worth US$140mil on assumption that Facebook may be valued at US$40 a share but any gain can only be realised if the shares are sold and there is a capital repayment or dividend payout.

Analysts are comparing Google's valuation with that of Facebook. The world's favourite search engine went public in 2004 and Google's shares were priced at US$85 at issue but are now at US$583. Can Facebook reach that level?

That aside, a question to ponder is, had Tan pushed the growth of Friendster, would Friendster's position be like Facebook today?

Whatever, only Tan knows if this was his best bet ever. Who will ever know?
Deputy news editor B.K. Sidhu hopes Zuckerberg will know how to reward the 845 million Facebook users who have helped him get his biggest break in his life and if he needs lessons on goodwill, then he should read up how Maxis Bhd rewarded some of its users when the company was listed and re-listed.

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