The timing of the disposal was interesting, not just because it came in the middle of the Dubai World crisis but also on the day he visited Vice-Premier Wang Qishan in Beijing.

Sands, who was credited for devising the British government's first rescue plan for that country's banking system in October last year, did not sell any shares during the financial turmoil.

In fact, he subscribed to the bank's rights issue last year and has been sitting on good profits - shares of StanChart have more than doubled year to date.

Sands still owns 321,532 shares, valued at HK$61.5 million.

Wumart booster takes profit

Another businessman who cashed out handsomely before Christmas was Zhao Danyang, a big investor in Wumart Stores.

Zhao, who paid HK$16 million at a charity auction to have lunch with legendary investor Warren Buffett six months ago, cashed out nearly HK$500 million by placing 42 million shares yesterday.

That more than covers his original investment of about HK$400 million and comes on top of the more than HK$125 million he has made from selling some of his stake in the past three months. He still owns 13 million Wumart shares, his only disclosable investment in Hong Kong.

In June, Zhao said he had taken along some Wumart annual reports for Buffett to look over at the lunch, spurring speculation that the investment guru might be interested in taking a stake in the Beijing supermarket chain. It didn't happen, but that hasn't prevented the stock from more than doubling this year.

Teaching moment at Harvard

Harvard's business school is world-renowned, but Harvard University still managed to put a foot wrong with its interest rate swaps.

The United States' oldest university was so strapped for cash that it asked Massachusetts state for fast-track approval to borrow US$2.5 billion. Almost US$500 million was used within days to exit the swap agreements.

The swaps were 'so toxic that the 373-year-old institution agreed to pay banks a total of almost US$1 billion to terminate them', Bloomberg reported.

Most of the wrong-way bets were made in 2004, when Lawrence Summers, now US President Barack Obama's top economic adviser, led the university.

Ouch. Puts you in mind of George Bernard Shaw's words: He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

Doesn't explain how Summers went on to help lead the world's biggest economy out of the current toxic economic quagmire.

We suspect Harvard Business School's Dealing with Derivatives 101 unit this semester will be fairly straightforward: Just Say No.