BBL shareholders approve the acquisition of PT Bank Permata TBK  It’s going ahead – Shareholders have approved approved its plan to acquire all the shares in PT Bank Permata Tbk (BNLI). The deal is now expected to close in 2020 after BBL completes the transaction with Standard Chartered and PT Astra to acquire their combined 89.12% […]

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AOT: AOT released their latest flight/passenger figures last week, and things look awful with passengers -28% for the first week of Feb, expect for this rate of change to increase for the rest of the month. The first step they’ve done to counter the drop is to reduce the landing fee and now there’s news […]

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So the news is out. Let’s just go straight to the hotel stocks. Thoughts: This too shall pass. It’ll probably end up being another good trade/buying opportunity. Difference is that the base of tourism numbers is higher compared to 2015 If the epidemic worsens…losing money on a hotel stock will be the last of your […]

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So The BOT has relaxed its rules on the property sector for the Loan to Value (LTV). Now the details are as follows: Effective date 20th Jan 2020 First home/contract units < THB 10 mn – 100% + 10% of top-up loans Second home/contract – 10% (previously 20%) downpayment for those that have a first […]

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Why pay attention to this? They only manage some USD 6 trn in assets…so it wouldn’t hurt to see what they are planning to do with their capital and here’s the two key paragraphs and a link to the 2 of their letters “ Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects. […]

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Oh how I love these, granted 80% are US centric (which is a given) but it’s still good to see viewpoints. There’s another 5 in the link to Blackstone’s website. The economy disappoints the consensus forecast, but a recession is avoided. Federal Reserve Chair Powell lowers the Fed funds rate to 1%. Without a comprehensive […]

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So the government has come out with the another round of property stimulus measures, and here are the details: On October 22nd, 2019, the Cabinet approved a temporary reduction in transfer fee from 2% to 0.01% and mortgage registration fee from 1% to 0.01% to those home buyers of up to Bt3m/unit. It will last […]

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A few months ago I had a discussion with the research department of a regional sell-side team and one of the junior’s on the team had put together a fantastic internal analysis on the high correlation between Google Trends and tourism visits to Thailand. Now I can’t put up their magic sauce here because its […]

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TET: Please explain the history of MM. MM has a very interesting background and the brands have gone through 3 different ownerships before settling with MM. I joined the organization in 2003 where Au Bon Pain was in the initial stages of expansion and Dunkin’ Donuts was a dying brand with the stores and the […]

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