She said the bank slowed down its personal loans and micro small- and medium-sized enterprise loans this year, awaiting completion of the GE deal. It will now discuss plans with its new shareholder before speeding up business in these products next year.

BAY launched its micro SME loans over the past few months.

Earlier, it said it aimed to provide new SME loans worth Bt10 billion this year, but it has made only about Bt100 million to Bt200 million so far.

However, the bank's mortgage and credit card loans are expanding well, Charlotte said.

The bank's share of the housing loans market ranks third or fourth in the industry.

In the first half of the year, BAY made new mortgage loans amounting to Bt9 billion. Its full-year target is Bt19 billion.

The bank has been working with GE Money, the US financial services giant, for several years in its credit card business. An arm of GE Money is soon

to become BAY's 25-per-cent shareholder.

Charlotte said competition in the retail banking business is expected to get stronger next year. Whether the new BAY-GE alliance will impact on the industry will depend on the bank's business growth next year.

"The retail banking strategy of BAY has been clearly set for a few years," she said. "Our loan portfolio is not big enough to affect other retail loan providers."

She said the bank would retain its name despite GECHI's acquisition of 25 per cent of the bank's registered capital.

The bank plans to hold a press conference late next month to explain the deal, which will follow a shareholders' meeting on September 20. The deal has already been approved by both the Finance Ministry and the Bank of Thailand.

BAY planned to hold a press conference on August 16, but cancelled it abruptly after learning the Finance Ministry had not yet endorsed the deal.

Charlotte dismissed inquiries about any possible impact on the bank from the cancelled press conference.

Somruedi Banchongduang

The Nation