CIMB Thai to help local firms boost footprint in region
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CIMB THAI BANK will offer comprehensive financial solutions to large and mid-sized Thai corporates doing business in other Asean markets, in a bid to help such companies become more recognised and established across the region.
The bank – a local subsidiary of Malaysia’s CIMB Group – recently set up a new unit, which incorporates corporate banking and investment banking into a wholesale banking group in preparation for the full realisation of the Asean Economic Community (AEC) in 2015.
Pornchai Padmindra, senior executive vice president and head of the new Wholesale Banking Group, said yesterday that while Thai companies had the most outbound deals in terms of overall volume and value among Asean countries in the past few years, relatively few Thai corporates were widely known in the region.
Thailand is well placed in Asean, and Thai firms should therefore shine in the region as well, he said. CIMB Thai will, therefore, help large and mid-sized corporates that already have activities in Asean to become more recognised and established in these markets, he said.
CIMB Thai Bank has some 50 corporate group clients in the Kingdom, split 50:50 between conglomerates and large to mid-sized companies.
He said the bank was well placed to focus on Asean, which is CIMB Group’s home and where the core markets of the group are the “MIST” countries of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand.
CIMB Group has prepared itself to cope with the AEC for the past decade by expanding its footprint in Asean and acquiring business units that can strengthen the group in the region, such as the acquisition of the investment-banking unit from Royal Bank of Scotland last year.
“Thai banks can well serve Thai corporates doing business domestically. Therefore, we have to open a new channel for Thai corporates that are actively doing offshore business, in order to maintain a market place in wholesale banking,” said Pornchai. CIMB Group has branches in all Asean countries except the Philippines and Laos.
Pornchai, who was appointed in September, said the bank’s target in terms of loan growth or number of loan deals had not yet been finalised, but would be presented to the board next month.
The number of deals mandated by CIMB Thai will be higher and more varied than this year’s level, however.
Thai corporates have already set either proactive or defensive plans for the AEC’s implementation in a little over a year’s time, so the bank will focus on companies with aspirations of increasing business in Asean in terms of project financing, mergers and acquisitions and partnerships through three key strategies, he said.
The first is to give more importance to corporate customers that already have an Asean presence outside of Thailand.
“Those companies have enough capital to do business, but what we will actively do is to provide working capital and cash management, as well as risk management,” he said.
The second strategy is to offer more innovative products, with risk management, interest-rate management and commodity management as essential products that should be designed to help Thai companies operate in Asean, aside from deposit, lending or treasury products.
The third strategy is to promote Asean connectivity and specialised investment-banking staff from CIMB Group, as the bank wants to provide a growth strategy for its corporate customers, he said.
The focus for companies should not be solely be on inorganic growth through acquisitions, but also on organic growth, and CIMB Thai will therefore help add such a capability to those companies so that they can achieve sustainable growth, said the executive.
