We can now be clear that, like millions of Australian homeowners, the CPB is assets, not cash rich (and that is the point I wanted to make – MBAesque inaccurate according to Ralph, so be it). Much of those assets are still gaining below market returns – at least for it’s current assessed values, while some large plot holdings have been leased to be turned into multi-billion baht malls. Many still have ambiguous ownership claims – I dare say the majority of the small plots, which I do not know what proportion of all land assets may fall into this category. Please, anyone who knows more – especially those in Thailand who must know someone living in a CPB plot (must in the hundreds of thousands at least?), please tell us what you know.

It is also worth investigating, comparing CPB with other public and private bodies with massive land bank holdings. The State Railway of Thailand comes to mind, or private corporations like CP or Land&House. Investigate their practices from the economical, social, political – even environmental aspects and see how they perform. Maybe take this into an international study and see what other monarchies and tycoons do with their vast land holdings (well compare their cash and stock holdings too to get a clearer picture)…

For Ralph, I don’t have an MBA so I don’t qualify. I will assume he has one and will do the data mining and analysis for us. (I will also assume he is not one of the MBAs from top American institutions that bequeathed us the ‘Insufficiency Economy’ and the GFC!)

I can assure you that the CPB has changed its policies on how it deals with land (not all of it, but the valuable chunks) since the 1997 crisis, when they brought in new managers. Their job was to ensure better value and returns from the land.

If you log on to the CPB’s website you’ll see both pop-ups on their latest clawbacks and you’ll see the CSR stuff on how they deal with increasingly worried tenants.

You can also look at the current battle at the Fort to see real details of what they do.

What I can offer here (apart from what the Forbes, a capitalist bible/magazine, reported upon which we basing our comments), is only an anecdotal experience as an architect working in Bangkok in the mid-90s. We had a client who wanted to renovate his house built on a 200wah2 (800m2) CPB plot in LangSuan, a prime location. What I was told by the client and my boss then was that owning a CPB lease was little different from owning the plot outright. The client was only paying a few hundred baht lease per month, a rate unchanged for the many decades he lived there.

Another anecdote, an upperclassman involved in the SuanLum Night Bazaar project which sits on another CPB plot and has been used as a cadet training school for years told me, almost 10 years ago, that it is an army department who is benefiting from the land lease deal for the night bazaar more than the CPB. I’ve read recently that TycoonCharoen (of Chang Beer) has recently won the rights to redevelop that land and understand that the CPB was directly involved in negotiations and will directly benefit this time.

http://www.forbes.com/global/2008/0901/032.html
“Aviruth says that, in all, the bureau owns 3,493 acres in central Bangkok. Today that land is worth $31 billion, based on land values compiled by a Bangkok consulting firm…”

Any homeowner in Australia will understand what it means to be ‘assets rich but cash poor’ (with house prices in Oz capital cities rising between 200-300% between 1998-2008).

From the same article above, Paul Handley stated that the Crown Property Bureau “… still has a below-market-rent mentality for long-term stability goals,” he says. “Or, look at it this way: They have no rate-of-return goals on some of their real estate, limited goals on others and nearly commercial on others.”

A practice of ‘Sufficiency Economy’ at the large scale perhaps? Forbes noted a USD5billion decine in HMK’s fortune from 2008’s USD35billion. This translates to a ~14.3% decrease – compared to Vichai N’s #2 Singaporean (Temasek’s I assume, the regional benchmark) 45% loss.

As Nganadeeleg stated in #17, I favor a more transparent management and disclosure of CBP – but let’s try to be a bit more objective here…

Amarin is interesting given its refusal to print a book said to be about the red shirts and their pressure on award-winning writer Wat Wallayangkur who was apparently forced to resign from a committee at Amarin Printing for being sympathetic to the red shirts (see http://thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/new-essential-stories/ and the link to Prachatai there).

Thanks for the Thai translation.
Love your responses, keep it up.