GSB portfolio chief a potential for GPF

An informed source said Tachaphol Kanjanakul, GSB executive vice president in charge of financial management and investment, is one of the names on a list being drawn up by consulting firm PA Balance.

The firm has to submit the names of qualified persons to the recruitment committee chaired by Preecha Vajrabhaya, secretarygeneral of the Civil Service Commission, by the end of the month.

The board of the GPF, the country's largest pension fund, is in the process of recruiting a talented assetfund manager to replace Visit Tantisunthorn, the former GPF secretarygeneral, who lost his job due to poor performance last year.

The board has two key criteria: the new head of the GPF must specialise in asset management, and must be able to communicate effectively with members of the GPF.

Visit was blamed by the board for not communicating effectively with the 1.2 million members of the fund, resulting in misunderstanding about risks and returns on investment in the financial market.

Several GPF members have called for a return to the previous pension system, which was totally financed by the government budget, after the fund's return was a negative 5.2 per cent last year.

Visit and the board insisted the investment loss had been caused by the global financial crisis, while independent investigators suspected mismanagement as a major cause.

However, the investment return was a positive 3 per cent in the first half of this year, with the GPF's net assets worth about Bt330 billion.

The source said the GSB's portfolio of Bt250 billion last year received an investment return of 5 per cent, in sharp contrast to the GPF's loss. This qualifies Tachaphol to be next GPF chief, according to the source.

Tachaphol has bachelor's degrees in accounting and architecture from Chulalongkorn University and in political science from Ramkhamhaeng University, an MBA from Central Queensland University and a doctoral degree in finance from Chulalongkorn.

He has worked for the GSB since 2000.

He is said to be outgoing, making new friends easily. That should meet the GPF board's criterion that he communicate effectively with the fund's membership, according to the source.

Sathit Limphongpan, chairman of the GPF board, said earlier that new rules prohibiting its fund managers from investing in financial assets would be enforced to remove the potential for conflict of interest.

Visit recently resigned after the GPF's board set up a panel to investigate him and some GPF managers on whether their stock trading had violated the fund's rules.

He is also under investigation by independent countercorruption agencies over graft allegations.