Starting this month, employees of well-known financial consulting company Mr. Taiwan.com are being encouraged to take one month's leave without pay on a rotational basis, company founder and investment guru, Peter Kurz confirmed yesterday.
The former head of research at Merril Lynch & Co in Taipei, 44-year-old Kurz -- whom the local Taiwanese media have dubbed "Mr. Taiwan" -- did not deny yesterday that the company is not turning a profit.
"A lot of investment consultant companies are not making money now, and neither are we," Kurz said yesterday, adding that his company is still financially viable.
While the company let go a third of its origional 45 full time staff last summer, the plan now is to retain quality staff by asking them to take off -- a request some employees were happy to comply with.
"We all need a break from the heavy workload, so we are happy to take a rest," said a company employee who requested anonymity. "Staff are not opposed to the plan -- I like working for him, he's a good boss."
Another Kurtz employee said that the fact that the company was going through some financial difficulties was no secret and that "financial reasons were behind the policy decision."
Despite the general downturn in local and international bourses in recent months, Kurz expressed optimism over upcoming business opportunities, saying, "We are gearing up for [new] institutional clients such as QFIIs [qualified foreign institutional investors] sometime in September."
The Ministry of Finance has relaxed restrictions on QFIIs, which Kurz said will take some time to get authorization to invest.
He therefore said that the company's new policy is in response to economic cycles, which he believes will improve sometime in the third quarter.
One market watcher who asked not to be identified, however, said that Kurz's difficulties have nothing to do with cycles such as the burst of the dotcom bubble in early 2000, a declining TAIEX or a delayed economic upturn. Instead, she called his marketing strategy into question, saying that an over emphasis on producing high-quality research and analysis for foreign investors has pitted the small firm against heavyweights such as Merril Lynch and UBS Warburg.
She also said that Kurz's research services were a bit too costly, scaring away the average individual investor.
In response, Kurz said that he was confident that the company was on the right track by providing investment research services to institutional clients as well as retail investors. As a niche player, he said the company is constantly revising its marketing strategies to meet the changing needs of the marketplace.
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