James Ryan Jonas

Highest Paid Talk Show Hosts and TV stars in the US

No wonder a lot of kids want to be TV celebrities when they grow up. A Yahoo! article shows that several US TV stars are indeed paid a lot.

Leading the pack is perennial top-paid talk show host Oprah Winfrey, who earns $315 million per year for her The Oprah Winfrey Show.

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Citibank scandal: Did Francis Bryan Ang steal the money or not?

Last week, Citibank Philippines reported that one of its private banking officers have gone missing and allegedly carted with him hundreds of millions of pesos worth of depositors’ money.

Francis Bryan Ang, an Assistant Vice President (AVP) of Citibank Binondo’s Citigold Wealth Management Group, is said to have stolen at least P100 million of his clients’ money. Another news report place the total amount allegedly stolen between P600 million and P1 billion.

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How to trade stocks in the Philippines

The Philippine stock market seems to be in a bullish trend again.

As of August 2010, the Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) is up 20% year-to-date, that is, from January to August 2010. It may not be as high as the 2009 PSE performance of 63% full-year return, but it is a strong sign that things are looking up.

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Salaries of top execs in BDO, BPI, UnionBank, other Philippine banks

Among publicly-listed Philippine banks, top executives of UnionBank of the Philippines (UBP) received the highest salary and bonuses in 2009, while top executives of Banco de Oro (BDO) and Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) follow next.

This is based on an analysis of annual reports for the year 2009 submitted by local banks to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE). The reports do not show the individual salaries and bonuses of each executive, but presents the lumped compensation of the banks’ top officials. The number of executives receiving the compensation was shown, thus, the average figure was derived.

UnionBank’s top 5 execs each receive P21.28 million compensation

An analysis of executive compensation shows that on average, the salary of the top 5 officers of UnionBank of the Philippines (UBP) was P17.03 million each, plus additional compensation and bonuses of P4.3 million each — for a total of P21.28 million compensation for each of the top 5 executives in 2009.

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Largest Banks in the Philippines (2009)

Last year, we posted a list of the Top 10 Banks in the Philippines, based on total assets and deposits at year-end 2008. We now bring you the list of the Largest Banks in the Philippines, in terms of assets, deposits, and net income, as of year-end 2009.

The list only includes banks headquartered in the Philippines, meaning other banks based in another country but with local operations are not analyzed. Also, since the basis of the financial figures are the financial statements submitted to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), only publicly-listed banks are mentioned. Government- and privately-owned banks whose financial statements are not available to the public are excluded in the list.

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PSE’s new trading schedule, Odd Lot market, Board Lot table

How to earn from Stock Trading and Investing

After months of delay, the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) is set to launch its New Trading System (NTS) starting July 26, 2010.

The NTS will replace the current Maktrade system used by the PSE since 1993. The new system alongside the extension of trading hours, was to be rolled out originally in June 2009 but was postponed to October 2009 then deferred again due to technical and regulatory issues.

The NTS will use a trading software product developed by NYSE Technologies SAS, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NYSE Euronext which, in turn, operates the largest exchanges around the world including the New York Stock Exchange and Euronext.

Under the PSE’s New Trading System, the following major changes will take effect.

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(How to solve) Fatal error: Allowed memory size exhausted

I tried to automatically upgrade our blog today using the Upgrade link in the WordPress Dashboard, but it failed because of an error:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate … in /wp-includes/http.php on line 1358

The “fatal error” might be a bit scary to see, but don’t worry because the solution is going to be easy.

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