More than 20,000 Kasikornbank staff nationwide all found on their desks a green apple that contained a smile-shaped sticker: “Kasikornbank’s success comes from small smiles of us all.”

October 7, 2013 Leave a comment

Smile: secret to success?
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Last Friday brought a big surprise to more than 20,000 Kasikornbank staff nationwide. That morning, they all found on their desks a green apple that contained a smile-shaped sticker. With the apple was a card. Written and signed by chairman Banthoon Lamsam, the card said: “Pan Yim Hai Khun – Kasikornbank’s success comes from small smiles of us all.”
We knew “Pan” was Banthoon’s nickname. With the apple and the card, he gave smiles to all and reminded them all how important smiles are. Banthoon was also onstage at KBank’s head office in Bangkok’s Rat Burana district, to launch the internal rebranding. He told the staff about the importance of smiles, which were key to the bank’s success when it was established 68 years ago. He acknowledged that smiles could evaporate because of economic hardship, but says smiles don’t cost anything, so everyone should start smiling.
It seems all the executives agree. They appear in the music video, singing the song “Yim Noi Yim Yai” (Big and Small Smiles).  Well, Khun Pan, we can expect you to keep smiling too, right?

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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