Faith Colish is a senior US securities lawyer. A colleague and I met her once, when our then employer (a Malaysian securities dealer) wanted to set up a sales desk in the US. As fate would have it, Faith now features again in my radar screen. Ms Colish could lead to interesting development again, of course. A client wants to offer securities to private US investors. He has a fantastic product but I don’t know if he appreciates the complexities of the laws involved in what he proposes to do. So I initiated contact with Faith Colish and hopefully, she can offer useful advice at not too astronomical costs. She is after all, a Wall Street lawyer.

 

Australia is now one of America’s favourite little brothers. John Howard received red-carpet treatment (literally) in a recent trip there, and Dubya saluted him big time. Effusive, almost embarrassing praises were heaped on him by senior US pollies, all the time increasing the risks of having, for example, Melbourne’s rail system blown up by some fanatical Islamic US haters. Australia has also been in cahoots with the US on the Kyoto accord, refusing to be part of the international efforts to curb fossil fuel burning (or is it the greenhouse effect?). I was a little heartened therefore, to read in the papers this morning, that Australia will now open a debate on the use of nuclear power as an alternative source of energy. Victoria has dismissed it outright, but at least there will be a debate on the matter.

 

I don’t know what brought this about-turn. Sure, a lot of it has to do with oil price, which was last sighted somewhere in stratosphere. I remember attending our weekly analysts’ meeting in my last workplace in Malaysia, when we were advising the budget airline, Air Asia, in its public offering. Oil price was I think, cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet (USD40 per barrel). The team leader was briefing the CEO of the critical price level before the bottom line would be seriously affected. My recollections are hazy now as I wasn’t particularly interested in all of this then but I think they thought Air Asia would be grounded if it hits USD50 per barrel. Well, it’s over USD71 now but I think Mr T (Fernandez) is still swinging away so the analyst must have been less than accurate in his number crunching, but I digress. The point is, I wonder if Australia embarked on this debate on use of nuclear energy without consulting big brother. Did John ring George before he opened up this debate?

 

Somehow we still feel we need the US nod in many things we do. This is all part of the religion of Dollarism. When I moved to Melbourne, I scarcely thought I would have anything to do with any US laws again. I certainly didn’t think there was any occasion to link up with grand old dame of Wall Street legal eagles again. The still mighty US economy (yeah yeah, it is a diminishing giant, way past its’ use-by date, but a big economy like that doesn’t take a year or two to lose its magnet, it chugs along on its own momentum, for a bit) still attracts people wanting to make it big. Or simply, bigger. Like my client. Local sources, especially in 20-million strong Australia, simply aren’t enough. Maybe that’s what drove John Howard to befriend Dubya. That Australia needed a big brother partner. Or maybe he genuinely liked Dubya. I don’t know. With pollies, the last thing we have is faith. Whatever his motivation, I now have Faith. Faith Colish.