It was that a few days ago, we found out that the big business we are talking about was Ekkayuth who was a Thai tycoon based in Britian. His past was rather shady as quoted from the Nation this morning:
Ekkayuth fled abroad in 1984 following charges that he had run the high profile Charter fund scheme a year earlier. At that time, the government seized his personal assets and the assets of his Charter Investment Co Ltd.
More details on Ekkayuth:http://www.nationmultimedia.com/page.news.php3?clid=1&theme=A&usrsess=1&id=120487
About 2 days ago, Ekkayuth claimed that the Thaksin administration has been giving insider information to a number of close associates so that they can speculate on stocks and earn big money to help finance their election campaign that is coming up next year - which was on the expense of the smaller stock investors in which lost a significant amount of money. He pointed out to a number of stocks that mainly include SCIB (Siam City Bank), and said that two prominent politicians with initials of S and another with P close to Thaksin had been speculating on that stock. The unnamed politicians, which I speculate he was referring to was Prayuth Mahakitsiri (Deputy TRT leader and President of the Nestle Group Thailand) and Suriya Jungrungreangkit (Interior Minister) - both local tycoons with close relationship with the ruling party.
When I heard this news I can say, I have no love for any of these blickering tycoons. I don't trust the Thaksin administration a single bit since day 1, and I will reiterate this fact in this blog. Though I would commend Ekkayuth for coming back with guns blazing on his come-back trial, I have enough reason to suspect his motives. I think he is only trying to do what Thaksin has done. As many business during the Thaksin era has been forced into join or be exterminated - I do feel that due to this pressure a lot of businessmen who aren't close to the PM has a secret desire to push the PM out. Also due to Thaksin successful marriage of new age politics - using Government to serve the capitalistic business need, I do think there are increased political ambition by successful business people to emulate Thaksin's success on this area.
Talking about the stock speculation, I did talk a lot about a lot of my suspicion leading up to "this incident", in which I told many peeps I know that there is something horribly amiss with this administration. The point that I highlighted then was summed up by the immense media blitz that tried to get more smaller investors into the stock market which was high endorsed by the government. During the drive, it was indirectly highlighting that the stock market was an easy way to earn a quick bang for the buck - and comparing it to the meagre interest given by depositing money in the bank. With such theme, we can see a lot of new investors have been investing heavily on the stock market - which is a non-productive and speculative occupation. After the heavy leadup to this, there has been a number of strange occurrence that happened, which made me suspect the reason behind all of this.
I have a reason to suspect that the old style corruption is not in place, but I do suspect that the government may be trying to earn money by using its clout to influence the market factors - which is a worse form of insider trading - as it is the person that makes the market decision is the one who speculates on the stock market! I have suspicions that the take-over of ITV by the Shin Cooperation is one incident where something shady that cannot be proven has taken place behind the government house rooms (notice I did not say boiler room).
Before the lead up to this the takeover, the price of ITV was in the dumps as the TV channel was suffering heavy debts.
ITV at that moment is the only TV channel without government interference. However as Shin bought it, there was increased fear about government interference with the media which was against the lines of the constitution. However Shin executives claim that they have "no links" with the government, they are also considered to be independent agencies and have all the constitutional rights to take over ITV. Their first move was to fire a number of critical anti-government reporters, and proceeded to dumb down the contents of the channel from a highly investigative news channel to a typical variety channel. More details here:http://www.nationmultimedia.com/page.arcview.php3?clid=11&id=370&usrsess=1
During the time quickly after the takeover, there was a flurry of news that happened in quick succession on the news that drove the price of ITV up to the ceiling. The news that happened was the appointment of one of Thailand's most known TV personality - Khun Thraiphop as one of the executive boards of ITV in charge of revolutionizing the whole TV lineup of ITV, and the second about the government annoucing that it was willing to lower concessions for ITV along with pay penalty for overcharging ITV for the past few years. Notice that was floated only after the takeover of ITV by SHIN was completed. Noticed the bloody coincidence? Noticed the market price of ITV shares and the volume of trading during this saga? Though there isn't proof that I can put on the table, but I do want to point out a few things. This smells like the government has found a new way to earn easy money to feed its hungry mouth. Instead of old school corruption that the politicians ask for a percentage of the fee in mega projects - we can observe that new age politics use government decisions to influence market factors of the stock market so that it would be ripe for speculation. The ITV is just one of the "questionable" episodes in a number of different cases that has passed, but I'm very sure this won't be the last case we will see.
1 comment:
lots of interesting info, pisal. i hadn't read anything about itv in the farang papers- do you know if it was covered? i can't find anything in the nation but that may be beacuse their search function is so bad.
beyond the usual streamlining it's hard to imagine that shin corp didn't consider the lower concessions as a way of improving itv's profitability. it could have been in negotiations before the takeover... but the timing is of course suspicious.
if the appeal for lower fees was underway before the acquisition then thaksin would be in a difficult position- if he lets things go through it may be warranted but it would look bad, however if he halted the process then it'd hurt his company just to save his credibility. certainly any government ruling that favors shin corp will be pounced upon by the opposition, even if it was something shin corp should have received.
but somehow i doubt that the lower fees would have been given to itv had shin corp been the new owner. as such it's a clear conflict of interest here- this sends worrying signals to investors as such market interference increases uncertainty increasing risk which decreases the appeal of investment in thailand.
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