Beware of Your Emails

Email is an inevitable communication tool today. Some executives have even become addicted to blackberry. But email does not pose a risk of unintentional leakage of your "secrets" (no matter with public concern or not). Certain firms have installed the email surveillance system for their compliance officers to detect "offending emails" of the staff.

Last week the market was shocked when Morgan Stanley announced that its highly ranked Asia economist, Andy Xie (謝國忠), had "suddenly" resigned. The announcement did not explain why he was going or where he was going. Given such a strange time (the bonus period is coming) for resignation, the market was speculating why Xie had left.

Yesterday Finance Asia released an article, which may give us an insight about Xie's leave. It was said that Xie wrote an email about Singapore on 18 Sep 2006. Then this email has been spreaded around by the region’s fund management and banking community.

Under the subject "Observations on the IMF/ World Bank conference", Xie commented on that event recently hosted in Singapore. The following remarks in this email attracted most attention.

• "I tried to find out why Singapore was chosen to host the conference. Nobody knew. Some said that probably no one else wanted it. Some guessed that Singapore did a good selling job. I thought that it was a strange choice because Singapore was so far from any action or the hot topic of China and India. Mumbai or Shanghai would have been a lot more appropriate. ASEAN has been a failure. Its GDP in nominal dollar terms has not changed for 10 years. Singapore's per capita income has not changed either at $25,000. China's GDP in dollar terms has tripled during the same period."
• "Actually, Singapore's success came mainly from being the money laundering centre for corrupt Indonesian businessmen and government officials. Indonesia has no money. So Singapore isn't doing well. To sustain its economy, Singapore is building casinos to attract corrupt money from China."

This email was intended to be circulated internally within Morgan Stanley but eventually got leaked. As Singapore is one of the firm's key investment banking markets in Asia, the above remarks would make it very embarassing.

Morgan Stanley spokesman made this remark on the email: "This is an internal email based on personal suppositions and aimed at stimulating internal debate amongst a small group of intended recipients. The email expresses the views of one individual and does not in any way represent the views of the firm. Morgan Stanley has been a very strong supporter of Singapore and has a great deal of respect for Singapore's achievements."

The lesson learnt from this story: Don't use emails to express your "sensitive comments" and trust the recipients would keep confidentiality for you! Learning to use emails tactfully is a must for many senior executives.