After so many scams and people having lost their money, MAS finally decided to take action to regulate investments schemes which have been operating unregulated. These investment schemes include the precious metals schemes such as Genneva Gold and land banking schemes such as Ecohouse which I recently wrote about.

Precious metal schemes such as Genneva Gold typically work by selling to the consumers and guaranteeing to buy back from the consumer at a higher price later. Genneva Gold in fact guaranteed a 24% return over one year period which we all know is not achievable. MAS said uch schemes will be regulated like any other bonds, so does it mean that they can only sell to accredited investors from now on? Given the costs and regulations  of bond issues, it is unlikely for such schemes to continue existing under the new rules. Besides, which bank would underwrite these schemes?

Land ...