PARISTA YUTHAMANOP and CHIRATAS NIVATPUMIN
by admin on Nov.20, 2007, under Industry
Who says size matters? Not necessarily, says Plieu Mangkornkanok, the chief executive of Tisco Bank. ”Sure, for financial institutions, size is an advantage. Large banks have the distribution network, the customer channels,” he said.
”We must avoid the businesses that depend on size and capture what has been ignored by the large banks.”
Tisco, with assets of less than 1Ǡ billion baht, pales comparison with the country’s commercial banking giants such as Bangkok Bank, Krung Thai and Siam Commercial Bank. Established in 1969 as the country’s first investment bank, Tisco for much of its history was one of the country’s largest finance companies, ranking second in size during the mid-1990s to Finance One.
But since upgrading to a full banking licence two years ago, Tisco Bank is now a niche player, with its asset base dominated by auto hire-purchase loans.
(continue reading…)