Five Thai banks and one Chinese bank
The five Thai banks are Bangkok Bank, Krungthai Bank, Siam Commercial Bank, Kasikornbank and Kiatnakin Bank. ICBC will provide the largest bank guarantee, according to sources close to the matter.
ICBC is a lender to China Mobile International, which has an 18-per-cent stake in True Corporation, the parent company of True Move H.
Aphinant Klewpatinond, chief executive officer of Kiatnakin Bank, earlier said that under the Bank of Thailand's single-lending-limit rule the bank could support True to the tune of Bt9 billion.
An executive at SCB said the bank didn't have an SLL for the guarantee.
Arthid Nanthawithaya, chief executive officer and deputy chairman of the executive committee at SCB, said that while the high prices True paid for the licences had increased its financial burden, the bank believed that having two 4G licences would strengthen its competitiveness in the long term.
He would not disclose details of the bank guarantee but said the auction of the licences and the takeover of Big C Supercenter by Thai conglomerate TCC Group would boost corporate-loan demand this year.
Berli Jucker
TCC Group assigned its subsidiary Berli Jucker to buy a 58.56-per-cent stake in Big C from |France-based Casino Group, with Bt220 billion borrowed to finance the acquisition, according to Berli Jucker's report to the Stock Exchange of Thailand.
Arthid said Berli Jucker was an SCB customer, and lending to the company was a normal practice for the bank.
Despite predicting a spike in corporate-loan growth, he said SCB's overall loan growth this year would still be in single digits because the outlook for the global economy was hard to predict, and as such the bank should not hurry to accelerate its business.
He said global economic uncertainty made strong corporations with low debt ratios more cautious with investments.
Therefore, private investments this year were not expected to increase much from last year.
"We will give more importance to risk management as a safeguard to tackle the global economic slowdown," he said. "Hence a high loan-loss provision is essential for SCB.
"The bank can carry on profitably even if there is a net decline compared with past years … New non-performing loans have slightly increased but we will try to control gross NPLs this year to be similar to last year."