Stockbrokers don't need extra protection

The roundtable discussion among Thailand’s stockbrokers on freeing brokerage fees can hardly be hailed as a breakthrough. Almost all participants in their variety of words supported fixed fees on scales as colluded and agreed upon among the brokers.

The discussion did not touch on the possible breach of Thailand’s Trade Competition Act BE 2542, in which collusion among traders could be illegal. In the US and Europe, breach of the anti-trust law or anti-monopoly law has been taken seriously. Consumers’ sovereignty is supreme. In Thailand, the collusion has been argued as necessary in protecting stockbrokers in the infancy stage. Historically, the issue has been on for decades, with a mixture of gallantry and fear. Stockbrokers have been of age for more than thirty years already and are no longer infants.

Songdej Praditsmanont

Bangkok