Thailand’s government plans to offer to buy Temasek Holdings Pte’s stake in satellite monopoly Thaicom Pcl, an aide to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said. “Certainly it’s our policy to buy back the satellite unit from Thaicom,” Sirichoke Sopha, a lawmaker in Abhisit’s
Democrat party, said by phone. “There is no formal offer yet. It’s just really a starting of negotiations.”
Sirichoke visited Singapore in April with Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij to meet with Temasek, which is “willing to
think about the deal,” he said. The government would make the purchase either through government-owned MCOT Pcl or one of two state enterprises controlled by the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology, Sirichoke said. Temasek, Singapore’s state-owned investment company, declined to comment in an emailed statement. The proposal was previously reported by the Bangkok Post.
The proposal to buy Thaicom is “really about national security and nothing else,” Sirichoke said. “It’s not about
taking out the opposition, because they could use another satellite which has a footprint in Thailand.” Thaicom shares have fallen 24 percent this year, compared with a 4.8 percent gain in the benchmark SET index. Temasek directly owns 41.7 percent of Shin Corp., while a
group of investors, including a Temasek unit, holds 54.6 percent, according to Thai stock exchange data. Shin owns 41 percent of Thaicom, which was founded by Thaksin in 1991. Two weeks before the anti-government protests, Thailand’s
Supreme Court seized 46.4 billion baht ($1.5 billion), or about 60 percent of the amount Thaksin’s family gained from its 2006 sale of Shin to Temasek. Thaksin lives overseas after fleeing a
2008 jail sentence for abuse of power. (Source: Finance Blog from a Bloomberg article.
