The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) Index closed at 1,286.18 today (September 15), up 13.84 points or 1.09 per cent. The volume of total transactions was Bt43.868 billion with an index high of 1,287.04 and a low of 1,274.62.
During the morning session, an analyst at Krungsri Securities said he expected the index to fluctuate between 1,265 and 1,280 due to a lack of positive sentiment.
In addition, he said, investors were delaying their investment until the US Federal Open Market Committee holds a meeting today and tomorrow.
“We expect the Fed to maintain the interest rate at 0 to 0.25 per cent and reveal its inflation target,” he said.
Moreover, he added, the SET will face volatility from mass sell-offs in stocks to mitigate risks from student protesters’ rally on September 19.
The top 10 stocks with the highest trade value today were AOT, MINT, CPF, PTT, PTTEP, JMART, STGT, CBG, ASIAN and CPALL.
As of 4.30pm, the price of oil rose by US$0.35 or 0.94 per cent to $37.61 per barrel, while gold rose by $11.80 or 0.60 per cent, to $1,975.50 per ounce.
Other Asian indices were mixed:
Japan’s Nikkei Index closed at 23,454.89, down 104.41 points or 0.44 per cent.
China’s Shanghai SE Composite Index closed at 3,295.68, up 16.87 points or 0.51 per cent, while Shenzhen SE Component Index closed at 13,143.46, up 121.47 points or 0.93 per cent.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index closed at 24,732.76, up 92.48 points or 0.38 per cent.
South Korea’s KOSPI Index closed at 2,443.58, up 15.67 points or 0.65 per cent.
Taiwan’s TAIEX Index closed at 12,845.65, up 57.83 points or 0.45 per cent.
The share price of COL and Central Retail Corporation (CRC) rose sharply during the morning session on Tuesday (September 15) after CRC announced it was acquiring COL and delisting it from the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) in a bid to expand its retail business.
The price of COL shares rallied 13.41 per cent, rising by Bt2.20 to Bt18.60, with transactions totalling Bt106 million. CRC, meanwhile, rose by Bt1.50 or 5.66 per cent to Bt28 per share.
PBHD, a CRC subsidiary, will purchase 640 million COL shares at Bt19 per share worth a total of Bt12.16 billion. The tender offer is expected to be completed within the first quarter of next year.
COL retails stationary, office products, books, entertainment media and lifestyle products under its retail banners Office Mate and B2S.
Bangkok Airways reopens lounges at Chiang Mai, Phuket airports
Sep 14. 2020
By The Nation
Bangkok Airways has reopened its Boutique Lounge and Blue Ribbon Club Lounge at Chiang Mai Airport and its Courtesy Corner and Blue Ribbon Club Lounge at Phuket Airport. The lounges are operating daily with social distancing, temperature checks and regular disinfection of all touch points, said the airline.
Bangkok Airways passenger lounges and courtesy corners at other airports will be reopened soon, it added.
Meanwhile, Bangkok Airways will resume serving in-flight meals for its domestic routes on Tuesday (September 15), marking another step back towards normality for air travellers.
The airline is required to serve food and beverages in a snack box, though tea and coffee are still off the menu. Passengers are still required to wear a mask during flights, except while eating and drinking.
The move is in line with a recent announcement from the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand (CAAT) on guidelines for airlines during the Covid-19 outbreak. Bangkok Airways will also resume in-flight sale of souvenirs from October 1.
Habitat Hospitality has appointed Peter Lucas as its new managing director.
Experienced in leading some of the top hospitality brands and businesses in Thailand and around the world, Lucas will oversee rapidly expanding Habitat Hospitality, a subsidiary of award-winning premium property-for-investment developer, Habitat Group, the company said.
Having previously held positions at BHMA, Boutique Corporation and Destination Properties, and asset-managed properties for Accor, Starwood, Hilton and more, Lucas comes to Habitat Hospitality from Cross Hotels and Resorts where as CEO he led the company through a period of exponential growth, the company said.
Lucas will oversee current operations, new resort openings and future additions to the company’s pipeline, as well as ensure a healthy return on investment for investors, the company added.
With a strong presence on Thailand’s east coast, current Habitat Hospitality resorts include X2 Pattaya Oceanphere, X2 Vibe Pattaya Seaphere and The Ville Jomtien Pool Villa. Resorts in the pipeline include Best Western Premier Bayphere Pattaya, BluPhere Pattaya Managed By BW Premier Collection, Wyndham Atlas Wongamat Pattaya, and Ramada By Wyndham Mira North Pattaya.
Pizza Hut Thailand, operated by PH Capital, is planning to open another 20 branches in different parts of the country this year.
Ausana Mahagitsiri, director of PH Capital, said: “Pizza Hut Thailand has been improving its performance, as proved by double-digit sales growth and profit since 2019. This was the result of new brand positioning and customer-centric marketing strategy.
“Pizza Hut had to strengthen its delivery system after online orders began pouring because people had to work from home due to the Covid-19 outbreak.”
She added that Pizza Hut aims to open another 20 branches this year. Earlier this year, Pizza Hut had opened 10 branches, including in Mae Sot, Nakhon Pathom, Surin, Prachinburi, Chachoengsao, Chonburi, Nonthaburi as well as on Bang Na-Trat in Bangkok, at Tesco Lotus on Phetchakasem 81 and the Jas Ramintra.
There are currently 158 Pizza Hut outlets in Thailand.
The board of Directors of Charoen Pokphand Foods Pcl (CPF) last Friday agreed to seek shareholders’ approval for its subsidiary in China to acquire 43 companies in the swine business through the issue of new shares as payment to the seller.
The move aims to integrate the business as one of the leading swine producers in China, which is the world’s largest pig market worth US$200 billion with an average annual growth of 8.3 per cent during the 10 years from 2010 to 2019 (according to China’s National Statistical Office).
Chia Tai Investment Co Ltd (CTI), whose main business is feed manufacturing and distribution in China, is an indirect subsidiary of CPF via CP Pokphand Co Ltd (CPP), a company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The proposal will facilitate the integration of its feed production in China with the swine business, which is now managed by Chia Tai Animal Husbandry Investment (Beijing) Co Ltd, a subsidiary of Charoen Pokphand Group.
The proposed deal aims to acquire 43 companies of Chia Tai Animal Husbandry Investment (Beijing) worth 28.14 billion renminbi (Bt131.287 billion). CTI will issue new shares as payment to the seller without incurring any financial burden.
Entering into this business will create business opportunities for CTI by penetrating more swine business markets with high growth potential like China, the company said. It is also a vertical integration of CTI to achieve an integrated swine business operation covering feed, farm and slaughter, throughout processing.
The company said this strategy would encourage efficiency to deal with market changes as well as combine expertise in its value chain.
The share-swap deal is expected to allow CTI to gain higher profits from swine business expansion thanks to the lucrative pork price. The company said the deal would also help higher efficiency cost and business management to benefit its investment in the long run.
Since this merger is a connected transaction, the acquisition requires approval from small shareholders. CPF will hold the first extraordinary shareholders’ meeting on October 27.
By The Washington Post · Hamza Shaban · BUSINESS, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS, RETAIL Amazon said Monday it will hire another 100,000 workers to meet surging demand in the covid-era, bolstering an already dramatic expansion of its workforce this year and underscoring the massive shifts in online spending the pandemic has helped fuel.
The latest hiring drive, which includes full- and part-time jobs, is the fourth large campaign the Seattle-based retail giant has initiated this year. All told, they add up to 308,000 positions. By comparison, Amazon said it employed 798,000 Americans at the end of 2019.
(Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Competition among major online retailers has intensified as many Americans adapt to a prolonged period of working from home, and consumers look to online shopping to replace visits to the store. But in the early months of the pandemic, Amazon was caught flat footed. As consumers rushed to stock up on cleaning supplies, home office equipment, and recreational goods, Amazon was rocked by shipping delays and a depleted inventory. Walmart and Target were able to fill some of that void, using their bricks-and-mortar locations as pickup depots and e-commerce shipping hubs, exploiting the legacy of an established physical presence. As a result, Amazon’s share of the U.S. online retail market fell from 42.1% in January to 38.5% in June, according to data from Rakuten Intelligence. Walmart increased its position from 2.2% to 3.5%, and Target boosted its share from 3.5% to 5.0%.
“Despite their profits, I thought the company’s in-stock performance and delivery standards were terrible in many cities, and I didn’t think they were particularly great to their front line workers,” said Paula Rosenblum, an analyst for Retail Systems Research in Miami. She added that the company is bracing for some portion of employees to be out sick from covid-19 and other illnesses, and is preparing for a potential blowout holiday season.
“Let’s see if they can recoup the business they gave away to Walmart, Target and Kroger.”
Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst at Forrester Research, said Amazon hires 100,000 to 200,000 more workers every holiday season. While it’s unclear how many of the people brought on during the covid crisis will remain permanent employees, she said the latest expansion seems in line with its traditional end-of-year boost.
Amazon’s growth stands in contrast to what is playing out in the larger retail sector, which has seen more than a dozen large brands file for bankruptcy since the pandemic started six months ago and ushered in a recession. Several well-known brands, including Lord & Taylor, Modell’s, Stage Stores and New York & Co., are shuttering all their stores. Those that do survive will be leaner: The Gap announced it would shutter 200 locations, while Ascena Retail Group – the parent company of Ann Taylor, Lane Bryant and Justice – is closing nearly 1,600 stores while in bankruptcy. Overall, a record 25,000 stores are expected to disappear this year, according to Coresight Research.
Amazon said in its most recent earnings report that net sales jumped 40%, to $88.9 billion from $63.4 billion in the year-ago period. It also doubled its profits, leaping from $2.6 billion to $5.2 billion during the months of April, May and June, as the coronavirus continued to spread across the country.
Amazon has faced criticism from workers rights groups and staff in recent months, including some who have complained of intense and unsafe working conditions during the pandemic, and allegations that the company fired workers for speaking out.
Amazon contends that the employees were dismissed for violating internal policies. Earlier this year, hundreds of Amazon workers staged a virtual rally, protesting what they said were unethical working conditions.
Like the other mega-tech companies with trillion-dollar market values, investors expect Amazon to emerge from the pandemic even stronger. But Amazon’s dominance has also attracted more scrutiny from Washington. In a recent congressional hearing featuring Big Tech’s chief executives, lawmakers spent much of their time pressing the head of Amazon. Members of Congress paid particular attention to the power dynamic between the company and its third-party sellers, which both rely on Amazon’s marketplace and in many instances must compete with Amazon’s own goods. The hearing marked the first time Bezos testified on Capitol Hill.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Cathy Chan · BUSINESS
Before CLSA was acquired in 2013, the Hong Kong brokerage’s research division issued a warning to investors in Chinese financial companies: beware of “high-frequency interference” from the Communist Party.
Nearly a decade on, there’s no better example of how the Chinese government can transform a financial firm than CLSA itself.
The latest case in point: CLSA executives have for the first time been ordered by their bosses at state-owned Citic Securities to participate in China’s five-year planning process, a ritual that Communist Party leaders have used to guide the nation’s economy since the 1950s, people familiar with the matter said. Major state-owned enterprises are required to submit five-year plans to the government, and CLSA’s outlook will now feed into Citic’s report to Beijing, which is unveiling a new road map in October, one of the people said.
The diktat adds to a series of steps by Citic to overhaul CLSA, a Hong Kong icon that’s long been known for its independent-minded research and raucous investor conferences. Some observers have portrayed the moves as a financial-industry microcosm of the Chinese government’s broader clampdown on the former British colony.
Citic’s leaders have argued that the changes at CLSA are needed to improve discipline and coordination on everything from hiring to deal making and risk management. Yet the upheaval has also contributed to a steady exodus of senior talent and made it more difficult for the firm to retain even recently hired investment bankers from international competitors.
After CLSA Chief Executive Officer Rick Gould left in August, just a handful of division heads who pre-date the Citic takeover remain, including Shaun Cochran, now head of research, and Edward Park, who runs institutional equities. Much of the original leadership team, including long-time CEO Jonathan Slone, departed in early 2019 after clashing with Citic Chairman Zhang Youjun.
“Converting a freewheeling investment banking business into an SOE structure amounts to real value destruction,” said Chen Zhiwu, director of the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong. “CLSA can’t compete internationally any more and will have to rely on what its parent company feeds to it.”
A spokeswoman at CLSA declined to comment. Citic Securities didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking a comment.
The five-year plan ordered up from Beijing includes growth and hiring targets, an assessment of risks and opportunities in major markets and an analysis of the competitive landscape, the person familiar said, asking not to be identified discussing internal matters.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and other senior Communist Party leaders are expected to lay out their 2021-2025 strategy for the entire country in October.
CLSA’s planning directive follows other recent changes that include direct reporting lines from Hong Kong to Beijing and a more restrictive approval process for capital investments and hard underwriting decisions, the person said. Client non-disclosure agreements also need approval from a quality control team, whereas previously they only needed a sign off from a director or a licensed representative. To encourage collaboration between staffers in Hong Kong and Beijing, their bonus pools have been combined.
What the changes will mean for CLSA’s bottom line is hard to say, given that the unit doesn’t disclose detailed financial statements. One thing that seems clear, however, is that the firm is becoming increasingly China-centric.
While Zhang has pushed CLSA to build a stronger presence in India, Southeast Asia and Japan, his overseas ambitions aren’t as grand as those of his predecessor, Wang Dongming, who orchestrated the 2013 acquisition. The firm’s primary goal now is to serve Chinese clients and help foreign investors navigate China, the person familiar said.
That strategy still requires executives and deal makers with overseas experience, a cohort that CLSA has struggled to retain. Gould lasted just 16 months as CEO even though he was appointed by Zhang, who at the time deemed it important to have a non-Chinese CEO to maintain the firm’s international image. In April, Zhang installed former Vanguard executive Charles Lin, a Chinese native, as CLSA vice chairman. Lin, based in Hong Kong, has now assumed many of Gould’s responsibilities.
Citic also earlier appointed Li Chunbo, its head of research and equities and trading, as chairman of institutional equities and research at CLSA.
The firm has seen some gains this year. Citic Securities ranks fifth in arranging stock sales in Hong Kong this year, rising from 11th in 2019, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Andrew Hartley, who worked for almost 15 years at CLSA and most recently oversaw Singapore, left earlier this year. Richard Taylor, the former head of corporate finance and capital markets, quit around the same time.
The exodus bodes ill for CLSA’s ability to attract overseas clients and deals, according to Asia Global Institute’s Chen. “Investment banking is totally a people business,” he said. “Once the key people are gone, so is its main business.”
In an effort to boost confidence among travellers, Emirates Airline has partnered with hospitals in Bangkok to extend special rates on Covid-19 tests for its passengers.
Emirates passengers will only need to present their air-ticket to be given a discount on Covid-19 tests at Bangkok Hospital, Bangpakok 9 International Hospital, Piyavate Hospital and Princ Hospital Suvarnabhumi. Covid-19 tests have to be taken no more than 96 hours before a flight.
Emirates resumed daily flights between Bangkok and Dubai earlier this month. Emirates flies to 85 cities across the world via its hub in Dubai.
Peter Lucas 
