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Published on July 9, 2007

"We have paid attention to thorough services, offering supporting products such as initial public offering shares, and a strong research team to compete with other brokers. This is why our market share has jumped significantly over the past five years," managing director ML Chayotid Kridakorn said last week.

Local and foreign institutional investors account for 60 per cent of SCB Securities' customers, while retail investors make up for the rest. The company in the past 10 years ranked almost last by market share.

"The company has learnt the matching of different types of customers by trial and error and we decided on a perfect combination of 60:40. Retail investors are not very active amid the bearish market conditions but institutional investors trade in stock. Meanwhile, retail investors trade while institutional investors stay at bay," he said.

Chayotid said his firm's target was to maintain its position as one of the top three brokerages.

The future full deregulation of the business will change the industry landscape by sorting out brokers into best service and best price, he said. Some investors would be willing to pay high commissions in exchange for excellent service, while others would prefer to pay a low commission fee to receive good service.

The proportion of retail and institutional investors in the Thai stock market will alter in the foreseeable future and it now sets the trend as seen by the fact that institutional investors' numbers are rising, he said.

"In the future, a few brokers will control the biggest market share and this trend is confirmed by the top five brokers now having nearly 40-per-cent market share from 20 per cent in the past," he added.

As of July 5, SCB Securities was in second slot with a 7.15-per-cent market share, after only Kim Eng Securities (Thailand) at 8.64 per cent. Asia Plus Securities was third with a share of 6.54 per cent, followed by Phatra Securities at 6.45 per cent and UBS Securities (Thailand) at 4.37 per cent.

Siriporn Chanjindamanee

The Nation