BANGKOK: When Piya Pong-acha’s employees chase payments from Thai debtors there are no strong men pounding on doors or threatening letters from lawyers. A basket of fruit and a polite home visit does the trick.
“We go to their houses with oranges or mangosteens,” Piya, who runs one of the growing number of firms in Thailand seeking profits from recuperating bad debt. “We don’t talk about the money but they know why we are there.”
Piya’s firm, JMT Network Services, is the largest consumer loan collector among the 42 asset management firms that have sprung up in Thailand since 1998, with dozens of them set up in recent years.
Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy has become a new frontier for distressed debt players, mirroring a business model that has a long history in Europe and the United states and has recently taken off in emerging markets such as China and India. The market is seen so profitable that state-owned Bangkok Commercial Asset Management, the country’s biggest debt collector, plans an IPO valued at up to $1 billion.
The firm, established in the wake of the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s, plans to acquire about 10 billion baht ($280 million) of bad housing, retail and corporate debt this year, a senior company official told Reuters.
“We go to their houses with oranges or mangosteens,” Piya, who runs one of the growing number of firms in Thailand seeking profits from recuperating bad debt. “We don’t talk about the money but they know why we are there.”
Piya’s firm, JMT Network Services, is the largest consumer loan collector among the 42 asset management firms that have sprung up in Thailand since 1998, with dozens of them set up in recent years.
Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy has become a new frontier for distressed debt players, mirroring a business model that has a long history in Europe and the United states and has recently taken off in emerging markets such as China and India. The market is seen so profitable that state-owned Bangkok Commercial Asset Management, the country’s biggest debt collector, plans an IPO valued at up to $1 billion.
The firm, established in the wake of the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s, plans to acquire about 10 billion baht ($280 million) of bad housing, retail and corporate debt this year, a senior company official told Reuters.
