By Rebbeca Lee

DBS financial advisers sold DBS High Notes 5 to investors like myself as 'growth' products without explaining the risk. I received a call from my relationship manager to say that my investment in DBS High Note 5 was affected by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and that, potentially, I will receive nothing in return for the investment.

My question was: How could I receive nothing when I bought a basket of eight banks? My relationship manager couldn't explain and had to rope in three experts from DBS to walk us through the highly-structured product to understand that what was sold as a basket of risk wasn't true.

DBS High Note 5 investors will not benefit from the basket of eight banks' debts, but will now suffer 100 per cent losses from the single party that defaulted, that is, Lehman Brothers.

The assets of the seven banks which did not default remain outside the calculations.

My questions:

How does DBS expect the investor to understand the risk when the relationship manager herself could not understand the underlying risk and had to rope in experts to explain?

How can DBS say that it has no exposure when it is exposing hundreds and thousands of investors to this high risk product by the millions of dollars? How much have DBS investors lost as a result of this structure constructed by DBS and its Cayman Island company?

In the valuation, which DBS has 80 days to complete, the formula says that DBS will deduct the fees, foreign exchange losses and other expenses before whatever's left is returned to the investor. How much is DBS benefiting from this?

What happens to the basket of debt which has not defaulted? Who is the primary beneficiary?

This is a high-risk product touted as a high yield, low risk product to non-sophisticated investors. Who is regulating DBS and protecting the layman?