Business

Four questions with Sri Lankan Hotelier Sanjiv Hulugalle of Mauna Lani, Hawaii

Published

5 years ago

2021/01/3

We publish an interview with Sanjiv Hulugalle, the General Manager and Vice President of Mauna Lani, Auberge Resorts Collection in Hawaii on opening his Hotel last November and the protocol that had to be adopted to meet the issues. The strategy adopted is of relevance for Sri Lanka when we are presently mapping a policy to open the country for tourism.

by Christina O’Connor Pacific Business News

When Mauna Lani, Auberge Resorts Collection reopened in January of 2020 following a $200 million redesign, Vice President and General Manager Sanjiv Hulugalle had been looking forward to welcoming guests to the revamped property.

Instead, the Hawaii Island resort was closed for most of the year, having shuttered in March due to Covid-19. Following a months-long closure, Mauna Lani reopened in November 2020.

We recently checked in with Hulugalle to chat about the reopening, current operations and his outlook for the future.

How have things been going since reopening?

We opened in early November, and we opened pretty much everything – the guest rooms including all our amenities and all of our operations, obviously with a much lower number of employees. We originally had about 600 employees, we have less than 300 employees back to work now.

We’re finding that we are doing anywhere from 30-40% occupancy on any given day. Even with the number of reservations we have, it’s better to be open than closed, because our burn rate was so much higher having it closed, from a cash-flow perspective. It has a much more positive effect on the team and the employees’ morale as well.

We actually opened [on-property restaurant] Canoe House in July, and that has been a huge success. We are doing half-capacity of what we normally did, but even with that, we now have a waiting list of about two months to get into that restaurant.

Have you noticed any new trends in what guests are looking for?

We’re seeing that people who want to travel, are not rate resistant. They want to make sure that we are following safety protocols, but they also want to make sure that we have all of our services open, including things like the Spa, the Fitness Center, Golf and Restaurants.

We are finding that our bungalows, which are like Residences, are in very high demand. Some have sold out for the holiday season. Families are looking to travel and want completely private experiences.

We have also launched a program to accommodate guests who want to continue to work and learn remotely while staying with us. We have spaces in the resort that we’ve created where guests can bring their computers and sit down to work. I saw a group of kids the other day at a long table that we set up at the south lanai of the resort, and all of them were on the computer doing [online] classes. We’re just trying to make it really fun and easy and engaging.

One of the things that we have found is that we are now providing more educational experiences to guests – doing things like our Turtle program [Malam a Honu], and teaching guests about the ecology of our surroundings around the ponds.

Tell me about some of the health and safety protocols you’ve implemented.

Our goal is to have a safe environment for all of our guests, employees and the community.

For all of our guests, when they check in, we make sure that they have a negative Covid test prior to their stay, and also all of our guests who come from the local surroundings, we do a temperature check on them at the entrance and we ask them specific [health] questions. We have taken a proactive approach to make it easy for guests to do their pre-travel testing by partnering with a company called Vault.

Guests have a lot of questions about how does it all work and what are the testing protocols. We have a pre-arrival team that is dedicated to taking care of guests’ questions on pre-arrival Covid -19 testing. We call every single guest before they come and make sure they have all of their documentation and all of that information.

We test our employees every three days – we’ll do a screening of 50 [employees] in different departments. The team member testing has given confidence to the employees, which obviously has given confidence to the guests as well.

I think the most important thing is sending reminders to guests of mask usage. All guests, when they are moving around the resort, have to wear a mask. It’s an important part of safeguarding our guests, our employees and the community, and we make sure that that happens.

We make sure that [lounge chairs and beach chairs] are socially distanced. We are also very careful in the back of house – or heart of house, as I call it – we have very strict protocols with regard to the handling of equipment and supplies coming in. At our restaurants, we continue to use gloves – for every new table we touch, we change our gloves. And we also have Sanitizer available everywhere.

How do you envision the future for the property as we move into 2021?

I think it’s going to be challenging, there is no question. It’s going to be a challenging market place, but I think there is so much pent-up demand that when we do get the vaccine in full effect and we have a lot more confidence in travel, I think things are going to come back strong. People will be a lot more conscientious about safety, but people want to travel and I think Hawaii is going to be a destination where people really want to come.

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Business

Oil at $150 will trigger global recession, says boss of financial giant BlackRock

Published

3 hours ago

2026/03/25

Priyan

Larry Fink was speaking exclusively to BBC business editor Simon Jack (BBC)

If the price of oil hits $150 a barrel it will trigger a global recession, the boss of US financial giant BlackRock has told the BBC.

Larry Fink, who leads the world’s largest asset manager, said if Iran “remains a threat” and oil prices stay high it will have “profound implications” for the world economy.

In a wide-ranging exclusive interview, he also denied there was an AI bubble, although he said the new technology meant too many people were pursuing university degrees and not enough doing technical training.

BlackRock is a financial colossus, controlling assets worth $14 trillion (£10.5tn), and is one of the biggest investors in many of the world’s largest companies.

Its size and spread gives Fink – who is one of the eight co-founders of the business, which started in 1988 – a unique insight into the health of the global economy.

The conflict in the Middle East has triggered wild moves on financial markets as people try to assess what will happen to energy costs.

For Fink, it is too early to determine the ultimate scale and outcome of the conflict, but he believes it will be one of two extreme scenarios.

In one, if the conflict is settled and Iran becomes a country that can be accepted again by the international community then the price of oil could fall back to below where it stood before the war.

But if not, he says, then there could be “years of above $100, closer to $150 oil, which has profound implications in the economy” and an outcome of “a probably stark and steep recession”.

The surge in energy costs has led to some in the UK to argue that it should be focusing more on producing its own oil and gas.

On Tuesday, industry body Offshore Energies UK said that without more domestic production, the country risks becoming reliant on imports “at a time of rising global instability”.

Fink says countries need to be pragmatic about their energy mix by using all sources available to them, but providing cheap energy is key to driving growth and raising living standards.

“Rising energy prices is a very regressive tax. It affects the poor more than the wealthy.”

While the UK already has some solar and wind power and hydrocarbons, if oil prices were to rise to $150 for three or four years, “you would have so many countries moving so rapidly towards solar and maybe even wind”.

Countries should not depend on just one source, he says.

“Use what you have unquestionably, but also aggressively move towards alternative sources too.”

Some analysts have suggested that there are some echoes of the run-up to the 2007-08 financial crisis in the markets at the moment.

Energy prices are surging and some have flagged signs of cracks in the financial system. BlackRock itself is one of several firms to have limited withdrawals by nervous investors from private credit funds.

But Fink is adamant there is no chance of a repeat of the financial trauma seen in 2007-08, when several banks around the world collapsed or had to be rescued, as he believes financial institutions today are more secure.

“I don’t see any similarities at all,” he says. “Zero.”

The issues affecting some funds account for a small fraction of the overall market and investment from institutions remains strong, he says.

Fink also rejects suggestions that the surge in investment in AI, which has seen billions of dollars invested in the new technology, has been overblown.

“I do not believe we have a bubble at all,” he says.

“Could we have one or two failures in AI? Sure, that I’m fine with.”

Last year, BlackRock was part of a consortium that bought one of the world’s largest data centre providers, Aligned Data Centres, in a $40bn deal.

“I believe there’s a race for technology dominance. I believe that if we do not invest more, China wins. I believe it’s mandatory that we are aggressively building out our AI capabilities.”

The biggest issue he feels that is hindering the expansion of AI in the US and Europe is the cost of energy.

While China is investing hugely in solar and nuclear power, in Europe “I just see a lot of talk and no action”, he says, while in the US “as much as we are energy independent, we better start focusing on solar… because we need to have cheap, inexpensive power to move into AI”.

Earlier this week, in his annual letter to shareholders, Fink said the boom in artificial intelligence risked widening inequality, with only a small number of firms and investors seeing the benefits.

However, speaking to the BBC, he emphasised AI was going to create an “enormous amount of jobs”.

He said that in his letter he had written about how many jobs would be created “related to electricians and welders and plumbers”.

In contrast, there might not be as much demand for some office jobs as AI evolves and this could lead to a rethink about what roles are needed as “society is changing and evolving”.

“We really put judgement on so many jobs and so many people who probably should not have gone into banking or media or law, [who] probably should have been a great worker with their hands, and we need to now rebalance that approach,” he says.

In the US, he says, after World War Two “we built the foundation of education, and we said to all the young people, go to college, go to college, go to college. And we probably overdid it”.

“We need to balance that out, and we need to be proud that… a career can be just as strong in these fields of plumbing and electricians.”

(BBC)

Business

Mahindra ldeal Finance’s Rs 1 Bn debut debenture issue oversubscribed on day 1

Published

5 hours ago

2026/03/25

Sahan Weerasooriya

Director/CEO, Mufaddal Choonia

Mahindra Ideal Finance Limited (MIFL) has announced the successful conclusion of its debut Rs 1 Billion debenture issue, which was oversubscribed on the first day of opening, marking a significant capital market milestone for one of Sri Lanka’s fastest-growing licensed Non-Banking Financial Institutions.

The Issue comprised up to Ten Million (10,000,000) Tier 2, Listed, Rated, Unsecured, Subordinated, Redeemable Debentures at a par value of LKR 100 per Debenture, raising up to Sri Lanka Rupees One Thousand Million (LKR 1,000,000,000), with a five-year tenure maturing in 2031.

Commenting on the outcome, MIFL Managing Director/CEO, Mufaddal Choonia said the proceeds of the Company’s inaugural debenture issue will be deployed to strengthen lending capacity across its core business segments, including vehicle leasing, gold loans, SME loans, and business loans.

“The success of our first debenture issue is testament of our performance so far and speaks of the confidence that investors have placed in our future growth story. The strong market response is also the best validation we can secure from the investor community on the strong fundamentals that underpin our business. We will honor that trust by deploying these funds to further provide accessible credit to enrich the lives of our customers and for the communities we serve.”

The capital raise also strengthens the Company’s Tier 2 capital base in compliance with the Central Bank of Sri Lanka’s Capital Adequacy Requirements.

The Debentures were offered in two structures — Type A, at a fixed rate of 12.00% per annum payable annually, and Type B, at a floating rate of the 364-Day Treasury Bill rate plus 3.50% per annum payable semi-annually.

The Issue carried a credit rating of A (lka) from Fitch Ratings Lanka Limited, with MIFL holding an entity rating of AA-(lka) with a Stable Outlook. The Issue was managed by NDB Investment Bank Limited, with Bank of Ceylon serving as Joint Placement Agent. (MIFL)

Business

SEC and CSE strengthen role of auditors of Watchlist Companies

Published

5 hours ago

2026/03/25

Sahan Weerasooriya

From Left to right: Kassapa Weerasekara, Ms. Manuri Weerasinghe and Ms. Nilupa Perera

The Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka (SEC) and the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) jointly organized an awareness session recently, for auditors of companies which are currently on the CSE Watchlist. The session focused on enhancing awareness of enforcement actions and timelines, reducing prolonged Watchlist durations, and fostering a more coordinated regulatory approach among regulators, auditors, and listed companies.

Addressing the session, the Chairman of the SEC, Senior Prof. D.B.P.H. Dissabandara highlighted the core professional virtues of an auditor drawing from his own career beginnings, “At the heart of every auditor’s role lies three virtues: integrity, objectivity and confidentiality.” He reminded the gathering, that while an auditor may formally be recognized as a supplementary service provider under the SEC Act, their true value runs far deeper. Every time a listed company submits its financial statements, it is the auditor’s opinion that gives investors the confidence to trust those numbers. In that sense, auditors are not just ticking a regulatory box, they are the ones holding the line on transparency.

Senior Prof. D.B.P.H.
Dissabandara

Further, Professor Dissabandara drew attention to the current Watchlist situation, noting that while the inclusion of certain companies on the Watchlist is an appropriate regulatory measure, their prolonged presence on the Watchlist may send adverse signals to investors. He called for a structured connected approach involving auditors and listed company management to ensure incremental progress towards resolving Watchlist triggers, particularly those arising from going concern issues and the non-submission of financial statements.

The Head of Listed Entity Compliance at the CSE, Kassapa Weerasekara delivered a presentation focused on enforcement actions that can lead to securities being transferred to the watchlist. Weerasekara reminded the gathering “If companies take the right steps and obtain independent verification on the resolution of all matters giving rise to Modified Opinion and Emphasis of Matter on Going Concern, their securities can be fully reinstated.” He closed by emphasizing that the process is designed to give companies a fair and structured opportunity to correct course.