The vast majority of the brokerages were hit when the whole chain of forward contracts they were trading with one another turned sour when the blue-chip conglomerate Pan-Electric, a favourite of many punters then, could not service a debt load of some $450 million.
In its 50th year, PhillipCapital is a full-fledged integrated financial services provider. Founder and executive chairman Lim Hua Min remains on the lookout for new growth opportunities and maintains a winning formula
The Pan-Electric crisis of 1985 may no longer figure much for investors here today, but for those who lived through the period, it was one of those market-shaking episodes way before the more recent Covid-19 downturn, the Global Financial Crisis, Sars and even the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997.
