NEVER GIVE UP : Air Asia's Founder

Pic 01: NEVER GIVE UP! Graduation in OneWorld Hotel, Bandar Utama, Kuala Lumpur

CONGRATULATIONS TO SUCCESSFUL ACCAs! You earned it through Hard Work and Commitment.

As for others, Never Give Up! (Winston Churchill, U.K. Prime Minister 1940) British Prime Minister's famous quote who led Britain to victory in World War 2. At the beginning of war in 1939, Great Britain lost badly in a battle in Europe. More than 800,000 British soldiers were stranded facing the fast marching Nazi forces. These soldiers were running out of both food and ammunition. Yet the world took it for granted that Britain won the war, not realising how difficult or even hopeless the situation was in the beginning.

Are you, all ACCA Candidates, in similar position? The going was tough? Your exam results were not up to your expectations and powerful stakeholders (Parents! ) were increasing pressure?

Well don't give up. No! NEVER GIVE UP!

Many didn't know the renown Air Asia 's Founder Anthony F. Fernandes also struggled in ACCA studies. He finally graduate at almost age 30 years! Yet he is Top 20 Richest man in Malaysia.

What made him succeed? Or should I say why he didn't succeed as early as others. Well, ACCA is a very challenging exams. He likely has to balance between Studies in Britain, work, family commitments and very definitely to work. He was working for Richard Branson, world's only billionaire with myriads of business.

You too can succeed at your speed! Preferably you will graduate sooner than Anthony Fernandes. Read his profile below. BEST WISHES to all you ACCA Candidates. There is a high spirit, even dangerous one within everyone. You have the potential! Harness and unleash it. Who knows, YOU COULD BE THE NEXT TONY!

Pic 02: Fernandez's Air Asia's crew










This article is about the Malaysian entrepreneur.
To Occupation Group Chief Executive Officer /
Director of AirAsia Berhad and founder of Tune Group Sdn Bhd /
Chairman of QPR Holdings Ltd /
Team Principal of Caterham F1 Net worth US$470 million or RM1,410 million and still counting

Tan Sri Anthony Francis Fernandes  (born 30 April 1964; also known as Tony Fernandes) is a Malaysian entrepreneur and the founder of Tune Air Sdn. Bhd., who introduced the first budget no-frills airline, AirAsia, to Malaysians with the tagline "Now everyone can fly". He has since founded the Tune Group of companies.

Pic 03: The famed ACCA-Businessman of Asia








He rose to prominence by turning AirAsia, a failing government-linked commercial airline, into a highly successful budget airline public-listed company.

Fernandes was also instrumental in lobbying the then-Malaysian Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad in mid-2003, to propose the idea of open skies agreements with neighbouring Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore. As a result, these nations have granted landing rights to AirAsia Born in Kuala Lumpur to a Goan father, and Kristang mother, Ena Dorothy Fernandez.

At a young age, Tony used to follow his mother, a businesswoman, to Tupperware dealer parties and conventions. He was educated at Epsom College 1977-83 and then graduated from the London School of Economics in 1987.

He worked very briefly with Virgin Atlantic as an auditor, subsequently becoming the financial controller for Richard Branson's Virgin Records in London from 1987 to 1989. Tony was admitted as Associate Member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) in 1991 and became Fellow Member in 1996.

Facebook : Poor revenues, Rich valuation

From left to right
Pic 01 : McDonalds is world largest and established franchise operations. Yet it's valued equal to Facebook.

Pic 02: Caterpillar Inc is world's largest equipment-construction manufacturer. Should it be lower valuation than Facebook? Its patents, plants, technology and engineering talents are worth less than Facebook's software?

Pic 03: The guy at the right place and the right time. Youngest billionaire - the ONLY one who hit it rich at age 17. Do you think there are others like him?


Facebook Inc., the social- networking website that in eight years changed the way the world communicates, filed to raise $5 billion in the largest Internet initial public offering on record.

Facebook doesn't need the IPO funding in view of its profitability and many willing private investors. Then why does it go for listing? Likely, it the war of talent, Facebook wants to lock in its 3,000 employee talents by issuing employee shares option exercisable in a future time. To improve its trusted status for stakeholders like clients and suppliers to deal with it. To increase its profile in developing countries that will generate more new facebook accounts.

Facebook named Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter on the IPO, while reporting a 24-fold increase in sales over the past four years to $3.71 billion in 2011.
The planned IPO dwarfs Google Inc.’s 2004 offering and tests whether social-networking providers deserve market values that rival such established companies as McDonald’s Corp. last traded shares at $99.06 valuing the company just over US$101billion while Caterpillar Inc., the world largest construction equipment manufacturer shares at US$113.88 per share valuing the company at US$74.78billion. Both giants are have a sustainable revenues of US$28billion and US$52billion for year 2011. Facebook Inc., California-based company is considering a valuation of $75 billion to $100 billion although its revenues is a measely US$3.7billion so far.


“The $100 billion valuation that’s being tossed around just puts it at a level we’ve never seen,” said Jeffrey Sica, chief investment officer of Morristown, New Jersey-based Sica Wealth Management LLC, which oversees $1 billion. “They have to be able to show that not only do they deserve to be at that level, but they have multiple channels to create new revenue.”

Sales Surge
Co-founded in 2004 by then 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook has grown into the world’s dominant social- networking site, squelching competitors such as MySpace Inc. with its more than 800 million users. While Facebook’s sales almost doubled last year, the company faces increasing competition from rivals such as Google, which debuted its own social-networking service last year, and short-message social site Twitter Inc., the filing shows.

A $100 billion market capitalization would value Facebook at 26.9 times trailing 12-month sales, more than double Google’s valuation when the search-engine operator went public in 2004. Facebook recruited Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, a former Google executive, in 2008 to help expand the company globally.

Facebook didn’t specify the number or price of shares it will offer, and the $5 billion amount is a placeholder used to calculate fees and may change. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s public website suffered a slowdown yesterday as traffic surged, forcing the agency to bring on additional capacity, according to spokesman John Nester.

Social-Media IPOs
Zuckerberg, 27, is the company’s top holder with 28.4 percent of the shares, the filing shows. He also has proxy agreements with fellow stockholders that potentially give him voting control over more than half the shares.

Accel Partners remains the top outside stakeholder with 11.4 percent of the investor votes, while Dustin Moskovitz, one of Zuckerberg’s co-founders, holds 7.6 percent voting power.

Facebook would follow a crop of social-media companies that went public in 2011, the biggest year for U.S. Internet IPOs in more than a decade, according to Bloomberg data. Nineteen companies raised $6.6 billion in 2011, the most since 101 raised $11 billion in 2000, the data show. Professional-networking site LinkedIn Corp., music-streaming service Pandora Media Inc., daily-deal site Groupon Inc. and social-gaming company Zynga Inc. all sold shares last year.

In outlining its potential risks in the filing, Facebook cited hacker attacks, regulatory scrutiny, a shift to mobile technology and rivals such as Google+. The company also said it would face competition in China if it manages to gain access to that market, where its site is currently blocked.

Top Investors - Many Billionaires to come
As the site’s popularity grew, banks, hedge funds and mutual fund companies started buying stock. In January 2011, Facebook said it raised $1.5 billion in a financing round led by Goldman Sachs that valued the company at $50 billion. Goldman Sachs, funds managed by the firm, and Digital Sky Technologies bought $500 million of stock, while Goldman Sachs offered $1 billion of shares to non-U.S. clients.

While Facebook has steadily added users since its creation, it has faced increased scrutiny over its protection of user data. In November, the company agreed to settle privacy complaints with the Federal Trade Commission. The move may help allay criticism that it doesn’t do enough to shield the information it prods users into sharing.