- "Beer in the fridge" incident :-). This was hilarious where he (at 10 years of age) and his brother decided to try out a bottle of beer. Their dad later decide to drink that last bottle that he knew was in the fridge. When he did not see it he asked the kids, his wife and his maid and no one knew about it. The dad suspected the maid, who was with them for years and fired her. Everyone was sad to see the maid getting fired and Malcolm confessed to his dad. However, his dad never apologized to the maid but the maid decided to continue working there.
- Terrorist contact. At the age of 17 he was sent to the army and he was placed near the Angolan border. They caught some terrorist and imprisoned them. One day he came near the cages and had eye-contact with the terrorist and he could see the burning passion in his eyes that showed that he did what he (the terrorist) believed was right even though they were doing bad things and Malcolm believed that he and his army team were doing what was best for the country.
- At age 19 he came to the U.S. and he said that is the first time he really questioned what Apartheid really was. His belief is that when you have to choose between what is legal and what is moral, it is always best to pick the "moral" choice.
Next we had Leonid (Leo) Kandinov from Robbins Arroyo give a talk on "Taking Action Against Investment Losses" that impacts many shareholders and corporations. His colleague Ajit Narasimhan was also in the audience.
Mr. Leonid Kandinov is an attorney at San Diego based Robbins Arroyo LLP. Mr. Kandinov represents individual and institutional investors and consumers in complex litigation, specifically focusing on shareholder rights, securities fraud, and antitrust matters. For his efforts on behalf of his clients, Mr. Kandinov has been recognized as a Super Lawyer Rising Star in 2016, 2017, and 2018.
He indicated how corporate management discusses many things in board meetings that are confidential and they get leaked out leading to major shareholder risk and losses. Tesla was a glaring recent example when its CEO Elon Musk announced taking company private without any written confirmation. That led to major losses for the shareholder, for the company and for him personally.
They represent plaintiffs on a pro-bono basis and only gets paid from the proceeds that comes out of settling the case. It seems that total investor losses have reached almost $334 Billion! The team at Robbins Arroyo works diligently with their clients to ensure that illegal activities by corporations are corrected and secure any compensation for the losses. Recently they did a "Shareholder Derivative Action" against the board and/or executive members of Facebook and they took Mark Zuckerberg into deposition and finally settled the case for some amount.
They monitor "insider trading" issues and other illegal activities that causes a company's stock to fall. Western Union was another example of money laundering that they faced about 5-6 years ago. The company had to pay over $35 million in fines. The sad part is that in some cases, when the company pays the fine it is eventually coming out of the shareholder's pot but in many cases the insurance companies cover that cost. Eventually, as more regulations are put in place the stock recovers. UPS was another interesting case where they were caught shipping illegal cigarette cartons (683,000 cartons) and these were ending up in the hands of under-age kids. They proved that this was happening with full knowledge of the UPS executives and the judgement was a fine of $247 M to New York state and city.
Overall, this was a very educational talk and members really enjoyed it since there were several good questions. He encouraged people to sign-up for StockWatch as it is a FREE service to all clients. There is no cost to the client since the payment comes out in the end from legal settlement costs.
