Koos Group seeking to purchase a bank in Thailand

Koos Group (和信集團), which has businesses ranging from banking to telecommunications, is seeking to become the first Taiwanese company to buy a Thai bank in a bid to tap rising Taiwanese investment in the country.

"We think we should have a push here to help our Taiwanese investments," Jeffrey Koo (辜濂松), chairman of Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控), the banking unit of Koos Group, said in an interview in Phuket.

"We have been interested in Thailand because the Taiwanese" are among the largest investors in the country, he said.

Overseas are planning to invest in Thai banks to tap growing demand for loans and credit cards as the second-largest Southeast Asian economy after Indonesia continues its recovery from the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The Thai economy is expected to expand 6.1 percent this year, after growing 5.2 percent last year.

The Koos group, which controls KGI Securities (Thailand) Pcl, Thailand's fourth-largest broker, wanted to buy a 25 percent stake in BankThai Pcl, the Krungthep Thurakit reported last November. The central bank refused to allow a stake to be sold to an overseas buyer. Chinatrust is the owner of Taiwan's largest credit-card issuer.

Chinatrust's is China but there are still a lot of restrictions there," said Brian Hunsaker, a banking analyst at Nomura Securities Co in Seoul.

Taiwan's is mature and they have excess capital, which they can use in higher growth markets," he said.

In July, Chinatrust bought smaller rival Grand Commercial Bank (萬通銀行) for about NT$20.3 billion (US$595 million) in cash and shares.

Chinatrust seeking to expand to compete with Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) and Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), the nation's two largest financial services companies, which both announced takeovers in August last year.

"It's kind of hard for them to do another acquisition in Taiwan," Hunsaker said.

Thailand's may sell as much as 25 percent of its stake in Thai Military Bank, the nation's seventh-largest lender by assets, to a Chinese or other Asian investor to pay back debt and cover bad loans, Krungthep Thurakit said last month, citing unidentified officials at Thai Military.

Taiwanese in the Southeast Asian nation include Delta Electronics (Thailand) Pcl, a unit of Delta Electronics Inc (台達電子), the world's biggest maker of computer power systems and chargers, and Cal-Comp Electronics (Thailand) Pcl, controlled by Kinpo Electronics Inc (金寶電子).

"Taiwanese companies have resumed their push to invest and expand abroad with the view to strengthen and grow," Minister of Finance Lin Chuan (林全) said in Phuket.