The Securities and Exchange Commission encourages listed |companies to undertake corporate social responsibility (CSR). SEC secretary-general Rapee Sucharitakul says such practices contribute to the sustainable growth of their businesses while gaining support from the communities around their plants.

In one such project, the SEC is collaborating with SCG Chemical Co to build fish habitats in Rayong province on January 23.

“We started a programme to build fish habitats in 2012 on the Eastern Seaboard, including Rayong and Chon Buri provinces. To date, we have built 400 fish homes,” an SCG Chemical staff member said.

The fish habitats, which are designed to replace coral reefs that have deteriorated or been destroyed, are built with waste material from the manufacture of polyethylene black compound 100 (PE100).

“When we produce PE100, |there are some products that are of substandard size or have been cut down lower than the standard. Normally, they will be waste, but they can be used to make fish habitats, thereby creating value while also being friendly to the environment,” he said.

He added that tests had found that PE100 can remain in the sea without causing pollution, unlike some other materials.

A senior figure in Rayong’s Baan Pla community said: “This is the second time for our community is building fish habitats after doing so successfully two years ago, when we set up 20 of them in the sea.”

She said that after those habitats were established near the Baan Pla community, local fishermen were able to catch more fish, shrimp and crab for sale than before.

“We welcome the chance to set up the next 20 fish habitats early this year, which will boost the number of sea products for our local fishing community,” she said.

When corporates undertake CSR programmes that support local communities, that will support sustainable growth for their businesses in the long term, Rapee said.

The move is in line with the French company’s plans to cut its debt.

The deal to purchase the controlling stake in Thailand’s leading hypermarket chain will cost tycoon Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi’s holding company Bt252.88 a share.

An agreement between the two companies could be announced before the market opens in Asia this morning.

Responding to the Casino Group’s decision to divest its shares in Big C, Warunee Kitjaroenpoonsin, director of corporate affairs at Big C Supercentre, said Big C was a public listed company consisting of many shareholders, with Casino the majority shareholder.

Warunee said the decision to divest the stake was in line with what public listed companies did.

Warunee said that despite having a new majority shareholder, Big C would continue to follow its strategic priorities set for 2016.

They include a business expansion, with the opening of six hypermarkets, three Big C Markets and 75 Mini Big C stores.

Major renovations of seven Alcudia outlets are also planned this year, while Big C aims to maintain its brand-price leadership in the market.

He succeeds Frank Krings.

In addition to his new responsibilities as chief country officer, Phumchai will hold the role of head corporate finance or Thailand.

He will report to Gunit Chadha, Deutsche Bank chief executive for the Asia-Pacific region, in his country management capacity and also Richard Gibb and Simon Roue, co-heads of corporate finance, Asia-Pacific. The appointment is effective immediately.

Announcing the appointment, Gunit Chadha said: “Deutsche Bank has a long and successful history in Thailand which is an important market for the bank in Asia-Pacific.

“Phumchai has led the bank’s investment banking business in Thailand with distinction and he is particularly well placed to provide leadership to develop and expand our overall business in Thailand.

“We thank Frank Krings for his sincere commitment and service in Thailand since 2011, during which our business has successfully deepened and widened.

“The bank remains deeply committed to its clients and business in Thailand and to Asia-Pacific overall, a position that was confirmed again by Co-CEO Juergen Fitschen at the bank’s 2016 annual press conference.”

At Deutsche Bank’s annual press conference in Frankfurt on January 28, Fitschen said: “Deutsche Bank Asia Pacific revenues in 2015 exceeded 4 billion euros [Bt159 billion], up 14 per cent on 2014, with all businesses growing at double-digit percentages.”

For Thailand, through five-year licence agreements, Robinson Department Store is committed to open more than 40 Aeropostale shops over the next five years.

Julian Geiger, chief executive officer of Aeropostale, said the US company’s international expansion began in Asia and it was pleased to announce further expansion across this key region. “Thailand will be an important market as we continue to expand globally across Asia. We are confident that our partnerships with Robinson Department Store Company will ensure that the Aeropostale brand will continue to expand and prosper internationally,” he said.

The company has signed a licensing agreement with Robinson Department Store to open about 40 standalone and shop-in-shop locations over the next five years in Thailand. The first Aeropostale location in Thailand will open at the Robinson Department Store in Fashion Island mall on February 18, followed by Future Park Rangsit on February 24, and at Robinson Sriracha on March 1. About 15 Aeropostale shops will be opened in the Kingdom this year.

Paresh Chauhan, executive vice president for international brands at Robinson, said the department-store chain was very excited to bring Aeropostale to Thailand, with the brand’s strong combination of trend-fitting merchandise at compelling prices.

The two companies will jointly forward the roaming deal, which was agreed late last month, to the National Broadcasting and Telecommuni-cations Commission (NBTC) for acknowledgement.

The roaming fee is reportedly 35-40 satang per minute. A telecom analyst estimated that the agreement with DTAC would cost AIS around Bt2 billion if the roaming lasted for six months and Bt4 billion if for one year.

Second-generation mobile phones compatible with the 900-megahertz spectrum usually can function on 1,800MHz as well.

An AIS source said it had so far migrated 1.6 million of its 12 million 2G subscribers on the 900MHz network to the 3G and 4G systems of its subsidiary Advanced Wireless Network (AWN).

AIS earlier operated its cellular service on 900MHz. After its concession ended last September, the watchdog reclaimed the spectrum for auction. True Corp and Jasmine International each won a 900MHz licence at an NBTC auction last December. They have to pay the first instalment of the licence upfront fee by March 21.

Once either True or JAS pays the first instalment, the NBTC will grant the licence to it, which means AIS will have to switch off its 900MHz service. This has forced AIS to offer heavy promotional campaigns to woo its 2G subscribers to the AWN network. It budgeted around Bt8 billion to offer subsidised handsets to encourage customers to move to AWN.

This week, True launched a campaign to woo this customer group to its network.

In a related matter, AIS yesterday denied an allegation by True Corp that AIS was blocking calls by its 2G subscribers to True’s cellular-service call centre.

Wilai Keangpradoo, AIS senior vice president for public relations, said the company was using all communication channels to inform its 2G customers about the privileges they will gain from switching to AWN’s 3G or 4G service. Therefore, when the 2G customers call out, they will hear this information first before their calls are routed to the dialled numbers. They will hear such messages for only one day.

The customers can cancel this information message by dialling *247*1# free of charge, and this is also told to them.

True Move H Universal Communication Company yesterday asked the Consumer Protection Police Division to investigate what it claimed were nationwide complaints of mobile customers being blocked from contacting TrueMove H Care 1331 to access information on switching from AIS to TrueMove H while keeping their existing phone numbers.

TrueMove H also said the beneficiaries and parties responsible for such actions could be AIS and its subsidiaries. If so, it took the view that such a practice breached the Computer Crime Act and the Telecommunication Business Act.

True claimed that when customers used the AIS network to call TrueMove Care 1331, their calls were immediately terminated, or re-routed to AIS’ interactive voice response promoting its services, and then the call was terminated.

True recently asked the NBTC to investigate the complaints.

The furniture giant, founded in Sweden in 1943, has lost a trademark dispute in Indonesia after the country’s highest court agreed the IKEA name was owned by a local company.

Indonesian rattan-furniture company Ratania Khatulistiwa registered its IKEA trademark in December 2013. It’s an acronym of the Indonesian words Intan Khatulistiwa Esa Abadi, which refer to the rattan industry.

The Supreme Court’s ruling was made in May last year, but only surfaced publicly on Thursday with its publication online by the court.

The ruling said Sweden’s Ikea, which registered its trademark in Indonesia in 2010, had not actively used the trademark in three years for commercial purposes and it could be deleted under Indonesia’s trademark law.

Ikea’s only outlet in Indonesia opened near Jakarta in late 2014.

Supreme Court spokesman Suhadi, who goes by one name, said yestrday that the ruling was not unanimous. One member of the three-judge panel said in his dissent that the trademark law could not be applied to a company as big as Ikea and much larger than the plaintiff, Ratania.

Officials at Ratania, which is located in Indonesia’s second-largest city Surabaya, refused to comment. Ikea in Indonesia did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Indonesian company took its case to the Central Jakarta District Court in mid-2014, when the first Ikea store in Indonesia was under construction.

The court ruled in September 2014 that the trademark was owned by Ratania and ordered Ikea to stop using its own name, which is an acronym for its founder Ingvar Kamprad and the farm Elmtaryd and village Agunnaryd where he grew up. Ikea appealed to the Supreme Court last year.

Ikea stores around the world are run under a franchise system. Since the early 1980s, the Ikea Group has been owned by a foundation registered in the Netherlands.

In-depth interviews with 711 job seekers across mainland China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam found that 39 per cent of professionals spent an average of three to four years in a role.

The company’s survey of 496 employers in these markets revealed a similar trend, with most hiring managers responding that 37 per cent of skilled employees told the same story.

The top two reasons for professionals choosing to leave their post are limited growth at the company and being underpaid.

To retain those professionals, Gerrit Bouckaert, country manager of Robert Walters Thailand, suggested that chief executives should be aware of corporate brand-building in parallel with preparing talent and career-development programmes, and promoting open communication between employees and employers and forging a good work-life balance.

Bouckaert said a company should be able to learn to read the signals at an early stage that its employees are unsatisfied in their jobs – well before they decide to leave the organisation.

The key clue in this regard is that an employee seems to be disengaged, resulting in a decrease in the efficiency and quality of their work.

To prepare for this problem, the human-resources department and supervisors should create a communication channel with employees, in order to get to the root of their unhappiness, he said.

He also suggested that if a highly valued employee wanted to quit, the employer sometimes needed to deal with this by making a counter-offer.

According to the firm’s survey, increased pay and a more competitive package were cited as the top reasons by 35 per cent of employees who would accept a counter-offer, closely followed by improved career progression, at 30 per cent.

However, 54 per cent of those interviewed said they would decline to accept a counter-offer to keep them at their company.

Other studies had shown that while pay rises could entice some candidates for the short term, there were usually other underlying causes for their unhappiness, Bouckaert added.

Apart from offering attractive salary packages, the key to effective retention is to keep employees engaged with the development of meaningful key performance indicators and a clear career-progression path, as well as more flexibility that creates a good work/life balance for them, he stressed.

For job seekers, the HR expert suggested that apart from creating a persuasive resume to present their core skill sets, they should dig down and do research about the target organisation and prepare themselves for a competency-based interview, particularly in high-demand industries such as finance/accounting, banking and financial services, human resources, information technology, sales and marketing, and supply chain and procurement.

The demand for professionals in these fields is fuelled by continuing foreign direct investment, particularly from China and Japan, he said.

“Candidates with experience in a multinational company, good English skills and management expertise can expect salary increases of 15 to 25 per cent when switching jobs this year,” the country manager suggested.

The share price ended at Bt42.75. Yesterday, the price dropped by 0.60 per cent.

There are reports that SCB Asset Management would suspend investment in shares and bonds issued by companies in Charoen Pokphand Group, pending for clarity on governance practices. There is widespread expectation that Korsak Chairasmisak, its chief executive officer who is the epicentre of the fiasco, would tender his resignation.

CP All’s board of directors convened a meeting today, days before the scheduled meeting on February 23, and resolved that Korsak and two other executives would retain their titles.

“Taking the above into careful consideration, the board has agreed to issue a formal admonition to the executives in question. All three executives will continue with their current responsibilities, in line with the stipulations of the SEC,” it said in a statement.

At the meeting, CP All’s board of directors agreed to review and refine the company’s governance and compliance guidelines. The Corporate Governance Committee will be set up, having the following individuals as members;

1. Pol Gen Phatcharavat Wongsuwan

2. Padoong Techasarintr

3. Umroong Sanphasitvong

The company would also appoint an external consultant.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on December 2 that four individuals were fined for using inside information in buying shares of Siam Makro. They are Korsak, Piyawat Titasattavorakul and Pittaya Jearavisitkul who are also executives of CP All. Athueck Asvanund, vice chairman of True Corp, was also fined. The SEC’s Settlement Committee fined the four for Bt33.33 million.

On December 27, independent directors convened a meeting and resolved that Korsak, Pittaya and Piyawat have accepted the ruling and paid the fines.

“After carefully reviewing the facts and taking into consideration the SEC punishment and the prior behaviour and performance of the individuals and their exceptional skills and experience, which would be difficult to replace, while balancing these factors with the overall effects and benefits to the company, as well as ensuring that this situation can never happen again. We have decided that it is appropriate for the individuals to continue in the business.”

SEC Secretary General Rapee Sucharitakul mentioned earlier that the regulator would refine the qualifications of listed companies’ directors. Those who were punished for insider trading would be disqualified to serve listed companies, he said.