Sigghhh... Are men really stronger?

Pic 01: I may not be as pretty as before, but I am still alive... hee hee...

For a fact, men have more muscles, power and energy. Yes we can unscrew soy sauce bottles, carry heavy flower pots or hammering nails in. From that narrow perspective, men are indeed stronger.

But seen from longevity strength, we fall far behind. Lets compare the men and the fairer sex:


















Pic 02: Women is the cause or costs to men's shorter lifespan?

1. Chinese women live the longest in Malaysia, with an average life expectancy of 79.8 years, said the Department of Statistics based on its 2010 records.

2. Indian women are in second place with (76.2 years),

3. Malay women (75.3 years),

as compared to men:

4. Chinese men (74.4 years),

5. Malay men (70.5 years) and


6. Indian men (68 years).

According to the 2010 statistics, in general, women in the country had a higher life expectancy at 77 years compared with men at 71.9 years - an improvement from the 74.7 years for women and 70 for men in 2000.

Could the longevity of women be due to lower stress by having fewer babies?
The fertility rate among women, however, dropped from 3.0 in 2000 to 2.2 in 2010. There you go, fewer babies over the past 10 years. Less children means less stress. But what about men who also have smaller families? Their expectancy increased but didn't surpass the women counterparts.

"Malaysia is expected to reach a maximum population of 57 million by 2090. 475,816 births were registered in 2010, excluding still born babies, while there were 129,327 deaths, resulting in an addition of 346,489 people to the population.

Malaysia is among the youngest demographics country in the world because 67.5% of the population are in the 15-64 years bracket.

The statistics also revealed that 71% of the 28.3 million population in the country, lived in urban areas and only 29% remained in rural areas.

So let us get back to the issue, why women outlive men?
Some speculative reasons are:
1) Men shoulder the main responsibility to provide materially for families, thus they face more stress.
2) Men are less inclined to see doctors with minor health problems unless it deteriorated until its too late as it becomes serious illnesses.




















Pic 03: "Drink up and you will look as smart as me."




















Pic 04: What pollution? I am contributing to commercial activities.


3) Men are callous. They drink, wallop Nasi Lemak (Animal fats), sleep less and smoke their lives away. Note that Malay Men don't, or at least not suppose to take alcohol, have shorter lifespan than Chinese Men but longer than Indian Men. It appears that Chinese men would consume alcohol but less Nasi Lemak, Beriani (fatty rice), Sup Kambing (Cholesterol rich mutton) lived the longest. Whereas Indian Men consumed both alcohol and fatty food lived less. More correlation studies are needed here but it seemed that longevity has to do with our diet.

Some speculative reasons for women living longer are:
1. Science perspectives: the female hormone estrogen lowers harmful cholesterol and raises "good" cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein). Emerging evidence suggests estrogen treatment after menopause reduces the risk of dying from heart disease and stroke, as well as of dying in general.
2. Habit Perspective: Women smokes/drink less or not smoke/drink at all compared to men.
3. Diet Quantum Perspective: Women eats less and thus have less problems of high cholesterol and heart disease.
4. Social Perspective: Women are naturally more sociable, being more expressive. When stress, they 'talk their problems' out to their trusted girlfriends. You may note that women can go forever chatting on phones, facebook, cuppa of coffee, snacks. By letting go, their de-stress their emotional state and thus a more relaxed physique. Less risks of developing Heart-related diseases.
5. Society pressure: Women needs to look pretty, shaped pretty. As a result, they pay more attention to facial treatments, gyms, exercise and checking the weights more often than men. Naturally result in healthier bodies.

Contrast with society's perspective of men:



















Pic 05: Man thinking, "I am a successful businessman."


= if a man is bald? ohhh.... this is a boss or "Dai Si Tau" (big Boss)
= if a man is overweight? ohh... this is a successful businessman
= if a man is both? ohh... this is a Successful businessman + Boss.

Men can get away with poor health, strangely associating it with success.

Narrowing the gap
Perls and Fretts of Harvard University, point out that deaths from lung cancer have almost tripled in women in the past 20 years. One study concluded that, on average, middle-aged female smokers live no longer than male smokers.

"Smoking," Perls and Fretts conclude, "seems to be the 'great equalizer.'"

Conclusion
Let us live and enjoy life responsibly being moderate in habits and lifestyle.

Sources :

Laura Blue, 2011, Why Do Women Live Longer Than Men?, http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1827162,00.html#ixzz1hLW3pTqz, Date Visited:23rd December

Thestar, 2011, Malaysian Chinese women live the longest, http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/12/22/nation/20111222151838&sec=nation, Date Visited: 23rd December

DEC 2011 EXAMS & Olympus decaying "NIPPON" governance

-related to all ACCA candidates and P1 (GRE) candidates






























Pics Clockwise from top:
(1) Fired CEO- the whistle blower of Olympus Corp (Japan)
(2) New CEO installed by powerful Japanese keiretsu insider dominated elite shareholders.
(3) "Hi, Sushi Ma-sen, Arigato gozaimas." : Its pretty on the outside, but rotten on the inside. - Errrr... the product or person?


CURRENT SITUATION
Exams are round the corner. If only we can take that corner and not get cornered. Feeling stressed? All you ACCA candidates have done much and travelled far in doing mock exams, classes, tutorials and personal study. There are values in there. You are prepared in your own way for the exams. Don’t despair, if you feel stressed. All 185,000 ACCA affiliates and FCCA members have gone through what you are currently going through. All of us have done it and so can you!

EXAM TIME STRATEGY
Continue to practice questions and focused on exams techniques. There is very little time given ie 3 hours and 15 minutes for the written exams. Don’t squander that by over-writing or over-thinking. Write according to questions requirements.

And as Winston Churchill said, “NEVER GIVE UP!” The former British Prime Minister led Britain to victory in World War II against the Nazis forces.

WISHING THE VERY BEST OUTCOME TO ALL YOU ACCA CANDIDATES.

ANNOUNCEMENT
I will be resuming P3 (Business Analysts) lectures in PJ Kasturi College Campus for new semester January 2012. Time table should be out by mid-December, 2011. It will be posted on the www.ksacitycampus.com link. (Subject to change without prior notice)


P1 (GRE) PRACTICE & APPLICATION
A recent Corporate Governance failure relating to Olympus Japan Limited below for your reading pleasure and related to P1 (GRE) paper. See key governance structure in Japan as distinct from Anglo-Saxon governance.

Key features of Japanese structure and consequences are:
1. Multi-tiered function
2. Upper tiered are geared toward the elite business circle who are true controllers
3. Complex kaizen or cross shareholding style is a form of insider dominated firms which puts minority shareholders interests to secondary position.
4. Thus, the fired CEO Michael Woodford (Pic 01 above) has failed to appreciate that the truly powerful stakeholders are the elite business people. He can bring forward in EGM exposing accounting scandals, but this will fall on deaf ears. The fact that Non Executives Directors can fire him indicates the power behind the NEDs. The new CEO Yuriko Nakao (see long face in Pic 02) has pledged a turnaround strategy which are viewed as too late and too little resulting in billions of lost shares value.
5. External investors lost confidence in Japan’s governance
6. Highly geared Olympus indicates that government controlled banks are arguably more influential stakeholders than mere minority shareholders.
Enjoy the truly Board room drama below:

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The recent disclosure of a longstanding accounting fraud at Olympus Corp. has drawn fresh attention to Japan’s corporate-governance practices, and raises important concerns for investors in companies there.

Based on what we know to date, Olympus sustained investment losses of at least $1.4 billion during the 1990s, and was able to cover up the shortfall until recently using various forms of “window dressing.” Although large accounting frauds occur periodically throughout the world, what is striking about Olympus is that the losses took so long to come to light. This raises troubling questions about Japan’s financial reporting and auditing practices, which are historically quite different from those in the U.S. and other Western countries.

Investors interested in Japanese equities -- for which valuations appear low using conventional metrics such as price- to-book -- are now left to wonder whether there are other companies with nasty surprises buried in their books, and more generally about the quality of corporate governance in Japan.

To address this, it’s necessary to understand some of the recent history of Japanese corporate governance. After the bursting of the bubble in equity and real-estate prices in the early 1990s, the Japanese economy went into a long slump. As its economic problems deepened, a consensus began to emerge that the country’s unusual financial system needed an overhaul.

‘Big Bang’
Beginning in the late 1990s, a series of reforms, collectively known as the “Big Bang,” were made to the financial system, including changes intended to move corporate- governance practices more into line with those in the major Western countries.

The big question raised by Olympus then is whether such reforms have had any effect, or are themselves a form of window dressing that disguises an underlying resistance to change in corporate Japan.

While there have been significant legal and institutional changes in Japan -- hostile takeovers now are allowed, for example -- there also has been much foot-dragging, most notably from the business establishment. Because of this opposition, those activist investors who have emerged over the past 10 years, both domestic and foreign, have had limited success in extracting value from companies.
Recent research I conducted with Kazuo Kato and Meng Li investigated whether corporate governance has improved in Japanese companies. We addressed this question by looking at firms’ cash holdings, which are often used by economists as a barometer of corporate-governance quality.

In most countries, the extent to which firms hold cash is one of the biggest sources of tension between management and outside investors. While managers generally like to hold as much cash as they can (it provides them with a buffer against unforeseen events), investors are concerned that large cash reserves provide executives with the opportunity to engage in value-destroying projects (such as “empire building” acquisitions) or otherwise simply to waste that money. Conversely, well-run companies tend to distribute excess cash to their stockholders through dividends and share buybacks.

Historically, Japanese companies have had cash holdings that are much larger than those of their counterparts in other countries. Many experts view this behavior as a symptom of poor governance.

We found evidence that Japanese enterprises still hold large amounts of cash, often in excess of 10 percent of assets, levels similar to those that prevailed in the early 1990s.

However, we also found that these firms are now much more likely to manage their cash in the same way as U.S. companies, in that these holdings are now more responsive to sensible economic determinants.

Cash Holdings
For example, Japanese firms tend to hold more cash when they are in industries with more volatile operating cash flows, a relation that wasn’t evident in the 1990s. So it seems that managers in Japan are now paying more attention to how they take care of their firms’ cash holdings.

Perhaps more importantly, we found an inverse relationship between changes in firms’ cash holdings and economic performance: Companies that lower their cash holdings experience improved performance; those that increase them did worse. This suggests that Japanese firms that strengthen governance practices -- by reducing cash holdings -- do better.

We also examined how investors value these holdings. The idea here is that for well-run companies with disciplined managers, $1 of cash should be valued at about $1 by investors. On the other hand, for poorly run concerns, investors will value $1 of cash at less than $1, given the risk it will be wasted.

We found that, investors in the 1990s heavily discounted the cash holdings of Japanese companies: at less than face value and at levels well below those of U.S. firms. Beginning in the late 1990s, however, the valuation of the cash holdings of Japanese companies improved steadily, consistent with better governance and management of cash.

We concluded that a substantial fraction of Japanese companies are doing a better job of governance today than was the case 15 to 20 years ago, and that there is a clear payoff to improved governance, in terms of both valuation and performance.
All of this means that Japan’s corporate governance might be improving, so cases like Olympus, while important, are increasingly rare.

(Douglas J. Skinner is professor of accounting at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a contributor to Business Class. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Source : Max Berley, David Henry, 2011, Japan’s ‘Window Dressing’ Hid Olympus Fraud, http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-01/japan-s-window-dressing-hid-olympus-fraud-douglas-j-skinner.html, Visited : December 2nd