Maybank keen on growth in Thailand

However, Maybank’s group chief financial officer, Mohamed Rafique Merican, said any acquisition of Thai banks would be based on terms and an environment that it was comfortable with and would not be purely for the sake of having a representation.
“We have a regional [footprint] now but Thailand continues to be a market where we do not have commercial-banking exposure.
“Maybank is always looking for a right fit in Thailand. It is something that we will definitely consider and look at,” Rafique said.
Rafique told “StarBiz”, the business section of The Star, that Maybank wanted to respond to growth opportunities in the regional market, after speaking at the ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) Malaysia Annual Conference 2012.
He said there was going to be growth in some of the markets that Maybank was already represented in.
“The growth in Indonesia, for example, is going to be faster than [in] Malaysia,” he said.
Rafique’s comments followed Maybank’s recent private placement exercise, which raised a record 3.66 billion ringgit (Bt36.7 billion).
The exercise had fuelled speculation that Maybank would bid for Bank of Ayudhya after reports that the bank, CIMB Group and Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp were interested in General Electric’s 25.3-per-cent stake in the fifth-largest banking group in Thailand.
Maybank has since said the funds raised were not meant for that purpose.
Currently, Maybank has a presence in the Kingdom via Maybank Kim Eng Securities (Thailand).
In Indonesia, it has a 97.52-per-cent stake in Bank Internasional Indonesia.
It also has commercial-banking operations in Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Cambodia, according to its website.
Maybank has said it intends to have a complete banking presence in Asean by 2015, in line with its target to become a regional financial player.
Meanwhile, after Maybank’s large placement exercise, banking analysts said local banks were well capitalised at current levels and were unlikely to engage in capital-raising activities in the near term unless they were looking at significant outlay in that time frame.
The core equity capital ratio, which measures the amount of capital a bank has, is generally above 7 per cent for all banks in Malaysia.
This is healthy enough to meet Basel III requirements that will kick off next year, they said.
Rafique said Basel III set the minimum requirement. “If we see growth potential, we want to be able to respond to it.”