Business-political connections can backfire

December 25, 2013 Leave a comment

Business-political connections can backfire

Business Desk
The Nation December 23, 2013 1:00 am

Since all Thais were given the vote 81 years ago, few business clans have established a direct involvement in politics. Khunying Kalaya Sophonpanich is one exception to this rule. From the Tejapaibul family, there is Pornthep. Nuanphan Lamsam also briefly got into politics. Their surnames speak volumes about what they represent. Wherever they go and whatever they do, they remind the public of their families.

There are several reasons most business families shun direct involvement in politics. Chief among these is that if anything goes wrong, it is not only those directly involved who will be affected, but others in the clan as well as the family businesses.
This is exactly what the Bhirombhakdi family is witnessing now, as a result of Chitpas’ position as former deputy spokeswoman for the Democrat Party and now a co-leader of the People’s Democratic Reform Committee. Chitpas, a daughter of Jutinan, chief of Boon Rawd Trading, now actively helps the PDRC. She drew huge public attention riding a crane to pull away road barriers. Thanks to her English proficiency, she also assists PDRC communication with foreigners.
In a letter circulated widely on social media last Wednesday, the family’s chief Santi Bhirombhakdi warned Jutinan of possible impacts on the family and the business from Chitpas’ actions. A day after that, four firebombs and a brick were hurled into Jutinan’s home, believed to have been politically motivated.
That must have been frightening, and as Santi said, it remains unknown how this political chaos will end and how much the Bhirombhakdi clan and its business will be affected.
This goes a long way to explain why many other families – including the Chirathivats – have been staying out of politics.

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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