SET’s Pakorn tipped for presidency
Board will appoint him today, source says
The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) will unveil its new president today after a nearly month-long selection process, with SET senior executive vice-president Pakorn Peetathawatchai expected to take the bourse’s top job.
The SET board of governors will announce the selection of the new president. Mr Pakorn, who also holds the positions of head of corporate strategy and head of finance and investment, will be appointed to the helm, said a capital market source who requested anonymity.
The board of governors will reconvene for a meeting today.
Mr Pakorn would become the bourse’s 13th president, replacing i ncumbent Kesara Manchusree, whose term ends on May 31. The SET president’s term runs for four years.
Mr Pakorn has held the position of senior executive-vice president of the SET since Feb 10, 2016. Previously he worked in the treasury department at Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) and served as the department’s vice-president from 1999 to 2002.
Mr Pakorn received his bachelor’s degree in electronics from King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, an MBA in finance from the University of Wisconsin, and a DBA in finance and economics from Boston University.
The application process for the new SET president initially began on Dec 18 and ran until Jan 15, but the application deadline was extended to Jan 31 with no reason specified.
Besides being under age 60 at the time of application, other key qualifications for
SET president include work experience, documents denoting a visionary outlook and capital market management, as well as education certificates.
The SET’s board of governors took
several weeks to assess the candidates.
The process to select the bourse’s new president involves three committees, including the first subcommittee assessing candidates with required qualifications headed by Pichet Sithi-Amnuai.
The second subcommittee is headed by Voravan Tarapoom and Pattera Dilokrungthirapop to select three qualified candidates.
In the final phase, the SET’s board of directors selects the right candidate for the job.
Mr Pakorn is among eight qualified candidates that applied.
Among the eight applicants, six were external candidates and two were internal executives at the bourse.
Santi Kiranand, a former senior executive vice-president who initiated the Live trading platform for startups, had also applied for the position. He recently resigned from the SET and is not one of the three short-listed candidates.
Mr Santi did not lack the necessary qualifications for being short-listed, but it depends on the views of each selection committee member to settle on the short-listed candidates, Mrs Pattera said without revealing the names of the shortlisted candidates.
According to the capital market source, the two short-listed candidates besides Mr Pakorn are Sutapa Amornvivat, first executive vice-president of SCB and chief executive of SCB Abacus, and Smith Banomyong, chief executive of SCB Asset Management.
Mrs Sutapa previously served as chief economist of the Economic Intelligence Center at SCB and headed the risk analytics and research group at TMB Bank. She holds an undergraduate degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University and a doctorate in economics, management and policy from MIT.
Mr Smith served as senior executive vice-president and head of the wealth division at SCB from 2011 to 2014 and previously served as the bank’s executive vice-president and head of corporate strategy from 2010 to 2011. He holds a Master of Science in economics from the London School of Economics.