As American and British banking behemoths receive billions of taxpayers' cash to help keep them afloat, many small investors like Mrs Lim, 59, are left stranded and waiting for answers.
The woes of the retired secretary started exactly a month ago when she was flipping through The Straits Times one Thursday morning. 'My heart skipped a beat when I read about a 52-year-old man who received a call from his DBS relationship manager telling him that his $50,000 investment in DBS Bank's High Notes 5 was all gone,' she says.
Mrs Lim, whose husband works in the electronics sector, had invested $25,000, a large portion of her savings earmarked for retirement, in the same product. But when Lehman Brothers - once the fourth largest investment bank in the United States - collapsed on Sept 15, structured products like High Notes 5 which were linked to it were unwound.
She called her relationship manager. 'He told me to be prepared. My $25,000 of savings might be zero,' she recalls.
'He didn't even bother to call to tell me. Tell me, what kind of a relationship manager is that?'
She is one of nearly 10,000 people who invested about $501 million in structured products linked to Lehman.
She felt misled by DBS which up till June was still sending her letters telling her to hold on to her investment.
'I have two letters, one in March and one dated June 27,' she says.
Even in July, when her investment of $25,000 was halved, she held onto it because 'the letter said that the product was designed to be held to maturity'.
'I don't even dare tell my son - he's overseas now - I don't want him to be worried,' she says. 'But I have not been able to sleep or eat. How am I ever going to earn that money back at my age?'
Earlier this week, she was in a group of High Notes 5 investors who attended a briefing chaired by DBS consumer banking group head Rajan Raju.
She says she feels better after the briefing. 'At least now I know for sure that something is being done at the very top to help us. But whether I will get my money back is another matter.'
DBS says it will complete its valuation process at the end of this month to ascertain how much investors like Mrs Lim might get back.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on Oct 18, 2008.
