SCB rejigs investment banking division

The five teams have been effective since midyear, and have been able to allocate SCB human resources to execute more deals while senior bankers have time to take care of clients who need advice, said Suthipat Serirat, first executive vice president and head of investment banking and capital markets.

SCB’s investment-banking division handles equity deals consisting of IPOs, REITs, infrastructure funds and mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

He said the efficient allocation of human resources was essential to make such deals flow smoothly.

The five teams are headed by senior bankers who have at least 10 years’ experience in investment banking, while mid-level executives will transfer knowledge to new generations of teams.

“A good point of this format is that we can retain human resources well and fill jobs quickly once someone resigns from the bank,” he said.

Knowledge transfer and resource sharing among the five teams will open opportunities to younger employees to handle small deals, and once they have more expertise, they can upgrade to larger deals, Suthipat said.

Half of SCB’s investment-banking fee income is generated by M&A deals, but these take a lot of time to complete. The bank wants to sustain IPO and REIT deals as these ensure long-term fee income.

The bank targets fee income of at least Bt1 billion a year. If it can rely on IPO and REIT deals to maintain that amount, anything it gets from M&A deals will be a bonus for the division.

He said the outlook for IPO and REIT deals in the overall investment-banking market was expected to improve because some deals that were delayed from this year will be conducted in 2017.

SCB hopes to secure a 25-per-cent share of the IPO/REIT market next year.