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| "We have capital adequacy ratios in our system that would make western banks weep with envy. Our problem is that banks are not lending" Korn Chatikavanij |
BY CONVENTIONAL MEASURES, if ever a man was fated to lead it would be Thailand’s debonair finance minister, Korn Chatikavanij. Indeed, the 45-year-old Korn has the profile of someone destined to head the UK finance ministry as chancellor of the exchequer, rather than the Thai treasury in Bangkok. The grandson of a privy councillor to Thailand’s royal court, Korn was born in London’s South Kensington and was educated at English schools, including Winchester College, before taking a philosophy, politics and economics degree at St John’s College, Oxford. A fellow undergraduate at St John’s was his life-long friend, the new Thai prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.
After a stint in the City of London with investment bank SG Warburg, Korn returned to Bangkok aged 24 to set up his own investment bank in a joint venture with Hong Kong-based Jardine Fleming. That partnership made him a wealthy man, with a fortune estimated at about $300 million based on property holdings in Bangkok’s fashionable Sathon Road area, the capital’s financial district.
