The foreign ownership law in Thailand has always been a grey area through the use of nominees. Telenor has decided to restructure its holdings within Thai Telco Holdings.

Currently DTAC’s major shareholders are as follows:

Thai Telco before was structured as follows:

And now the new structure is as follows:

So the issue in the past was that because of the percentage holding by Bolero and Telenor Asia, Thai Telco Holding was considered to be a foreign company and post these changes with BCTN as a majority shareholder, a thai co, 51% owned by the Bencharongkul family and 49% by Telenor, the foreign ownership issue which may have been an overhang on the share price and DTAC’s eligibility to participate in the 3G auction has now been removed.

And yet if you do basic mathematics Telenor still owns 59% in DTAC in total ownership, you’ve just gotta love the way Thailand makes things so “clear” 🙂