"We will invite about 50-100 of our major clients to be VIP members of a platinum club. We believe this facility will help our customer relations management to increase our market share, as it can build up a direct relationship between the company and its customers," managing director Phaiboon Nalinthrangkurn said yesterday.

"Normally, customers always follow marketing officers when they move to another broker [as they have no direct relationship with the brokers]," he  said.

The broker classifies its customers into three groups:

l Large-sized customers with a portfolio size of more than Bt50 million

l Medium-sized clients with a portfolio of Bt10 million to Bt50 million

l Small customers with a portfolio of less than Bt10 million. Tisco Securities will also conduct road shows twice a month to meet foreign institutional investors. In the third quarter, it will exclusively provide these customers with Direct Market Access, a trading system that allows users to trade stocks by themselves.

He said his firm had concentrated on increasing the ratio of its hedge-fund customers from the current 30 per cent to 50 per cent of institutional investors.

"At present, 70 per cent of our institutional investors are long-term customers," he added. Tisco Securities plans to offer local institutional investors new products, hold conferences to facilitate one-to-one contacts between them and the executives of listed companies, and create strong conviction-call research.

"Now, all brokers have improved their research papers a lot. We have launched strong conviction-call research, which carries the seal of conviction of our analysts to vouch for the research," Phaiboon said.

In addition, the brokerage will arrange sessions with experts in different fields to provide in-depth information.

Phaiboon said his brokerage house, which has only 80 marketing officers, had a 3.3-per-cent market share in the first five months of the year.

"As we employ a smaller marketing team compared to other brokers, our break-even stands at the average trading volume of Bt8 billion," he said.

The broker expected its yearly average market share to rise from 3.2 per cent last year to 3.5 per cent this year.

In the first five months of the year, retail investors accounted for 35 per cent of its business, foreign institutional investors represented 40 per cent and local institutional investors made up the rest.

Tisco Securities acts as financial adviser to six initial public offerings (IPOs), four public offerings and private-placement deals, and three mergers and acquisitions.

"I think our IPOs will list in the stock market next year, as our customers and we want the stocks to be traded when the stock market conditions become clearer," he said.

Phaiboon forecast that the SET Index would reach 800 points this year, and touch 1,000 points next year.

"Thailand has the potential to positively surprise the market on the back of robust exports, recovery of domestic consumption and investment, and downward interest rates. The domestic rate is estimated to be cut by another 50 basis points this year, in addition to the 1.5 percentage points already cut since the beginning of the year," he said.

"Besides, only the Thai and Taiwanese stock markets have yet to mark fresh highs among 10 major stock markets in Asia, he said, adding, "Typically, global fund managers would choose to invest in stock markets offering a high dividend yield and a low price-to-earnings [P/E] ratio. Our stock market has the highest dividend yield among Asian stock markets, but a low P/E. I'm bullish over the improving political situation."

Oranan Paweewun

The Nation