As a result, Solar Visible has taken over Infinity Solar’s solar power plant projects, in category of ground mounting with the installed capacity of 2 MW, located at Bang Chak Sub-district, Wiset Chai Chan District, Ang Thong Province, Thailand.

The investment value was Bt85 million. The seller had no relationship with the major shareholders, directors and executives of the buyer company and its subsidiaries.

Therefore, such acquisition is not considered an entry into the transaction with persons connected to company.

Objective of the investment is to operate the solar power plants, previously owned by Infinity Solar.

At present, the company holds 20,000 shares of Moindy, equals to 40 per cent of the registered capital of Moindy.

The company will sell 10,200 shares of Moindy to AnyMind Group Ltd, worth about Bt26.60 million. The term sheet required the transaction to complete on or before April 2019, according to the company report.

Both contracts stipulated completion of the projects within the first quarter of the year 2020.

So far this year, some 21 companies have filed the paperwork for IPO plans to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Of the total, seven plan to be listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), with remaining 14 bound for the MAI.

Last year marked a five-year low in the number of listings on the Thai exchange. Of the 18 IPO deals in 2018, seven made their trading debuts on the SET, with the remaining 11 on the MAI. Combined, they notched a total market capitalisation, by IPO prices, of Bt127.05 billion.

SET senior executive vice president Manpong Senanarong believes more and bigger deals are coming this year, targeting the country’s strengths in health, transport and food businesses.

MAI president Prapan Charoenprawat said the secondary board had set a goal of attracting 15 IPOs of sustainable-growth firms, startups and innovative companies with additional market capitalisation of about Bt20 billion. Now, 13 companies have submitted filings to the SET – three of which have been allowed to launch their share sales.

So far, about 200 companies are pressing ahead to tap the equity market after the MAI went out to educate targeted companies. About 15 firms, on average, are expected to be listed on the MAI each year.

Veena Lertnimitr, executive vice president of Siam Commercial Bank, is among others projecting an increase in the number of IPOs this year, citing the better investment environment. Some four or five of the bank’s customers – including those with interests in energy, food and property – are likely to be listed in the year, Veena said.

Soravis Krairiksh, deputy managing director of Bualuang Securities, shares the optimistic view for this year. Soravis forecasts the benchmark SET Index will rise to 1,820 points, with up to five customers to file for listings this year.

Anuwat Ruamsuke, head of capital markets at Phatra Securities, said that several firms have been preparing to tap the equity markets for a long period and some of the firm’s customers are drawing up their filing plans to go public.

It all depends on the stock market environment and concerns over the gloomy equities market could force some companies to delay their deals, he said.

Sompob Sakphanpanom, chairman of Asset Pro Management, expected no fewer than 25 IPO deals in 2019, with the outlook boosted by the likelihood of a general election this year. If the broader markets improve, more firms that want to raise capital for business expansion will file for IPO plans, Sompob said.

In 2019, as many as six of the company’s customers will submit filings to the SEC, he said. Two of these firms will file to go public in the first quarter, with two or three of them in the second quarter and one in the fourth quarter.

The stock listing process takes about 120 days for approval and the environment for the IPOs is expected to improve after the general election takes place and a new government is installed, Sompob said, adding that negative external factors – including the US-China trade war – are likely to ease over the year.

Vongpat Bhuncharoen, president of KBank (China) noted the bank has set up four innovation hubs in Beijing, Shanghai, Shangzhen and Hangzhou. The bank will also invest around Bt8 billion during 2019-2024 in startups throughout the country, including those focused on fintech, blockchain, e-commerce and artificial intelligence (AI)

“We want to develop and utilise new disruptive technology to provide better services to support our customers,” said Vongpat. “We have full license from China that enables us to provide full banking and digital banking in the country to support Chinese customers,” said Vongpat.

The bank’s mission is to provide a full range of financial services via digital platforms connecting both corporate and retail customers between China and the Asean economic community (AEC). The bank in China has three branches, in Shenzhen, Chengdu and Shanghai, focusing on cross-border business to serve trading and foreign direct investment (FDI) between China and AEC. They are also tasked with creating value chain businesses in China along with business matching and advice for Chinese companies entering the AEC.

The bank this year is also using robotic process automation (RPA) in operations management in order to increase operation capacity and process management. It also offers online supply-chain finance to support experimenting with online platforms, as well as online lending in order to engage partners to build risk frameworks and develop customer channels.

He said is also transforming from a traditional bank into a digital banking and digital life platform. Digital banking comes with a digital supply chain platform and a digital retail credit platform to improve customer convenience. Meanwhile, the digital life platform focuses on the middle class with an interest in tourism and travel, healthcare and education in order to support customer services excellence.

“We integrated the licence, fintech and life platforms to build our new services in order to support customers, such as for car instalments, online small loans and consumer loans. The bank also offers digital channel construction via Internet banking, our website and mobile app. We are a small bank in the huge China economy. Therefore we are leveraging our strength to build a bridge between China and AEC. We are the first digital bank from Asia to run full digital banking in China this year, to support the behaviour and demand of customers from consumers to large corporates,” said the president.

By the end of this year, he says, the bank expects to generate a 10-times increase in the number of customers. The bank had around 6,000 customers last year.

The 0.25 per cent increase will boost the bank’s time deposit rate to between 1.15 per cent and 1.85 per cent a year, he said, adding that loan rates will remain unchanged, he said.

We are talking about employees working well into their 70s, forging their way into uncharted territory and redefining what it means to be an ageing worker.

The current number, and rapid increase, of people remaining in the workplace well past the traditional retirement age is unprecedented. Over the past two centuries the life expectancy has increased by about three years for every decade, according to the authors of “The 100-Year Life”, Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott. This is pushing many to extend their working years.

The trend is tilting overall workforce demographics toward the high end of the age spectrum, and the impacts of the ageing workforce can already be seen at the individual, organisational, and societal level.

Some leaders, attuned to attracting and retaining top talent regardless of age, are actively redesigning their workplaces to accommodate the diversity of needs across a five-generation workplace. But many other organisations remain dramatically underprepared for this large shift.

Why would a business pursue older workers? What are the potential benefits to workplace culture and the bottom line? It turns out, there are many.

Engagement increases with age: Engagement levels tend to increase with age, likely because older workers have had the time to find roles that suit their skills and career preferences. The data shows that compared to other generations, baby boomers tend to persist longer and have more engagement in their work.

Traditionalists (born prior to 1945) still in the workforce have the highest levels of engagement, but baby boomers seem to be closing that gap as the years go by. Fairly consistently across studies, millennials tend to show the lowest engagement levels. This may be no surprise, as many younger workers are not yet in their preferred roles and are still working their way through entry-level or lower-management-level roles.

Just how important is engagement? According to a 2016 Gallup study, highly engaged workers typically perform twice as well as those who are disengaged across a range of metrics.

Experienced workers fill talent gaps: Experience is a critical asset right now, and one that older workers have accumulated over the course of their lives and careers. According to author David DeLong, this experience makes older workers more likely to possess three types of knowledge in particular: human, social and cultural. Human knowledge relates to skills or expertise specific to a role, such as a legacy system or tools, while social knowledge relates to relationship skills. Cultural knowledge is a combination – it is the understanding of how things actually get done in an organisation.

Work quality improves with age: While stereotypes about age-related rigidity and cognitive decline abound, research shows that age and core task performance are largely unrelated. In fact, certain skills that can help older workers provide unique value to their organisations, such as social skills, can actually improve as we age. In addition, studies have also shown that older workers can be just as creative and innovative as younger employees.

And while speed and the ability to multitask tend to decline after age 55, mature workers often display a great deal of wisdom, which can lead them to make more realistic judgements than some younger people do.

These duelling positive and negative effects associated with ageing seem to produce a consistent net effect: While older workers may be somewhat slower to complete some tasks, their work product tends to be of higher quality than that of younger workers.

Mature workers also tend to display stronger relationship skills and organisational citizenship behaviours. Outside an employee’s core tasks, there is a long list of behaviours that can promote how well a business functions – for example, showing up to work on time, displaying a positive attitude, complying with organisational norms and safety standards, and listening to instructions. All these things fall into the category of organisational citizenship.

Research has shown that older workers are more likely than younger workers to demonstrate positive organisational citizenship. In other words, they tend to show up on time, avoid gossip, help their teammates, and keep their frustrations in check. They are also recognised for attributes such as loyalty, reliability, a strong work ethic, high skill levels and strong professional networks.

Older workers attract older customers: The population is ageing not only in our workplaces, but also in the market generally – and older individuals tend to have a lot of spending power.

By maintaining representation of this customer base within the workforce, an organisation can improve its ability to engage with and even create new products and services for older buyers. As the saying goes, “nothing about us, without us”. In other words, to serve a population well, it’s best to have members of that population involved.

As many organisations are actively in the process of redesigning their work, workforce and workplace to better prepare for the future of work, let’s not overlook the fastest-growing segment of workers – the baby boomers – during that process.

Attracting and retaining the ageing population could be key to unleashing the future of work in your organisation. Preparing programmes to engage the range of older workers should be a priority and may be a differentiator in talent and workforce strategies.

It’s time to shift into action.

This article is an extract from Deloitte’s article, “No time to retire: Redesigning work for our ageing workforce” by Jeff Schwartz, Kelly Monahan, Steve Hatfield and Siri Anderson.

Ikea also announced a five-year plan to expand into new markets in the Philippines, Vietnam and Mexico.

According to its newly released 2018 annual report, as technology and urbanisation change customers’ expectations and the way people shop, the business has to transform to meet the new generation of shoppers. That generation tends to spend a lot of time on their mobile devices and look for emotional connections with the brands they love.

Customers’ interest in home furnishing has grown stronger, focusing largely on beautiful designs and functionality.

Ikea Southeast Asia, owns and operates stores in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. In 2018, the seven Ikea stores in the region received excellent feedback, attracting 85 million visits, a 20 per cent increase from 2017, the report notes.

The total turnover topped Bt25.2 billion for the first time, while the total number of Ikea Family members reached 1.71 million.

Ikea says its success in the past year is the result of its continuous efforts to offer new experiences and inspiration to customers. For example:

    Opening the first Ikea store to be fully integrated into a shopping centre in Thailand;

    Expanding e-commerce operations throughout all of Malaysia, and accounting for 3.8 per cent of total sales in less than three months;

    Improving customers’ experience through its customer contact centre.

Ikea Southeast Asia’s operational plans for the next five years are to:

    Launch an e-commerce business in Thailand this year;

    Begin building the first Ikea store in the Philippines in the heart of Manila, occupying around 65,000 square metres – the world’s largest Ikea.

The company also has ambitious plan to enter the Philippines, Vietnam and Mexico to bring its offerings to six countries with a combined population of 480 million (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Mexico).

On the sustainable development front, last year, Ikea introduced solar cooling at Ikea Alexandra in Singapore that reduced its energy consumption by 24 per cent. They also announced a plan to eliminate single-use plastics from Ikea stores by 2020.

True Group offers unsecured debentures

In late January 2019, True Group will offer unsubordinated and unsecured debentures with debenture holders’ representative No 1/2019.

The debentures of True Corporation or True, with tenor of three years, and a fixed coupon rate of 4.00-4.15 per cent per annum, will be offered to general investors and institutional investors.

The debentures of True Move H Universal Communication Co Ltd or TUC, with tenors of two years and five years, a fixed coupon rate of 3.60-3.80 per cent per annum and 5.00-5.15 per cent per annum respectively will be offered to high-net-worth investors and/or institutional investors.

Both True and TUC’s debentures will offer quarterly coupon payments with the minimum subscription of Bt100,000 and multiples of Bt100,000. The debentures of True and TUC have been assigned “BBB+” rating with a “stable” outlook by Tris Rating.

Bangkok Bank, Krung Thai, Kasikornbank, Siam Commercial Bank and CIMB Thai Bank are the joint lead arrangers for the debenture issuance. The Bank of Ayudhya has been appointed as the debenture holders’ representative. Proceeds from these debentures issuance will be used for refinancing debts, working capital requirements and/or business expansion.

William Harris, group chief financial officer, True Corporation Plc, said that these debentures are in the filing process with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and the group expects the SEC to announce the filing effective date by mid-January.

    The Debenture of True Corporation Public Co Ltd No 1/2019 is an unsubordinated and unsecured three-year debenture maturing in 2023 with debenture holders’ representative. The debentures offer a fixed coupon rate of 4.00-4.15 per cent per annum with quarterly coupon payments. The minimum subscription amount is Bt100,000 and multiples of Bt100,000. TRUE’s debentures will be offered to general investors and institutional investors. The subscription period is expected to run from January 28-30. 2019.

    The Debenture of True Move H Universal Co Ltd No 1/2019 is unsubordinated and unsecured debentures with debenture holders’ representative. TUC’s debenture tranche 1 is the two-year debenture with a fixed coupon rate of 3.60-3.80 per cent per annum maturing in 2022. TUC’s debenture tranche 2 is the five-year debenture with a fixed coupon rate of 5.00-5.15 per cent per annum maturing in 2024. The coupon payment frequency is on a quarterly basis. The minimum subscription amount is Bt100,000 and multiples of Bt100,000. TUC’s debentures will be offered to high-net-worth investors and institutional investors. The subscription period is expected to run from January 21-23, 2019.

Chaiyut Taweepworadej, CEO of MV Television (Thailand), said the company has invested in the new digital platform, MVHub, to bring Chinese movies and entertainment content into the homes of Thai subscribers.

The move puts MVTV Group at the forefront of Asean countries, with the largest collection of Chinese movies and series, according to Chaiyut.

The company considers the new MVHub platform a major upgrade, building on its traditional leadership in providing Chinese movies and other Chinese content through satellite TV channels and other formats.

Using the technology of online streaming, the company aims to leverage MVTV Group’s strength as the dominant market provider of content from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan with Thai-language subtitles, Chaiyut said.

MVTV started out in Nakhon Sawan province and has over the past several decades gone through multiple technology changes including home VDOs, VCD, DVD and other formats and to satellite and digital TV broadcasting.

“Over the past 40 years, we have built up the largest collection of Chinese movies, totalling more than 30,000 hours,” Chaiyut said. “We have worked with TVB of Hong Kong and others in Taiwan so our collection is the most comprehensive among Asean countries.”

Over the past three to four years, broadband Internet has reached more than 8 million households in Thailand while the 3G and 4G mobile networks are now available nationwide. As a result, the group decided to invest in the latest streaming media technology to deliver content to the target groups in Thailand and neighbouring countries.

The platform delivers on-demand content anywhere, at anytime and on any device.

MVTV Group has named Adisak Limprungpattanakij as managing director of the new business unit, while Dr Worawut Taweepworadej is responsible for online streaming technology.

Adisak said the firm’s online streaming service is available on both Android and IoS platforms for downloading onto desktops, tablets and other devices as well as smartphones and smart TV sets.

Older TV sets can also access the content via a set-top device to pick up the signals.

The starting price for the online streaming service is Bt189 per month. MVTV will also provide the on-demand service in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia with subtitles in local languages in the middle of 2019.

TVB of Hong Kong has also given the right to MVTV Group to manage its content in Laos, while the TVB Anywhere application is also part of the MVHub platform.

The TVB Anywhere app currently provides 24-hour free-to-air content of Chinese movies and series with Thai subtitles. In addition, Thai customers can buy the Thai Pack on MVHub at Bt200 per month. For tourists in Thailand, the TVB Anywhere also offers content in Chinese.

Adisak said Thai content developers could also join the platform to reach audiences in neighbouring countries such as Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.