Financial Times
Thailand’s richest man, Dhanin Chearavanont, is turning to the country’s volatile stock market to refinance his debt-laden telecoms group and raise money to build out a 3G mobile network in the country.
The billionaire is betting that the investor appetite for income-producing stocks remains strong, with his True Corp choosing to spin off Bt70bn of towers and fibre-optic cables into an infrastructure fund that will be listed in Bangkok.
The listing, potentially later this year, would follow Thailand’s biggest ever initial public offering in April, the $2.1bn share sale by BTS Group, another infrastructure fund backed by fares on Bangkok’s SkyTrain public transport system. That deal accounts for almost all the $2.2bn raised in Bangkok this year, according to Dealogic.
Income-producing stocks, especially real estate investment trusts (Reits), were hugely popular across Asia in the first half of this year. Before BTS Group’s deal, the region’s biggest IPO of the year had been the $1.3bn Singapore listing of Mapletree, a Reit.