The initial public offering of a 40% stake in Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding - the first major new listing in Thailand since the outbreak of the Asian economic crisis in 1997 - offers little in the way of risk and, consequently, limited scope for strong returns. Indeed, the brokers arranging the issue, primarily SCB Securities and Global Thai Finance Securities, are doing their best to portray Ratchaburis shares as something closer to a high-yield bond than a traditional equity investment.
The reason for this is simple Thai stock market investors have had an extremely rough ride the SET index has almost halved since the start of this year. Furthermore, the...
