Sigve Brekke, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of DTAC, the second largest mobile phone company in Thailand, says his $3 billion company is floating 10 percent of its 2.5 billion shares not for money "but to make the Thai people feel that they own DTAC."

Talking to The Daily Star at his Bangkok office yesterday soon after formally launching DTAC's share trading at the Stock Exchange of Thailand, Brekke explained why his company-- which is expecting a turnover of 60 to 70 billion baht (Tk 1,200 crore to 1,400 crore)-- was listing itself in the share market, if it was not for money.

"Firstly, we want to be listed in the market we operate. Secondly, we want to involve as many Thai people as possible in the company. This our own way of brand building, " he said. DTAC was previously listed in Singapore Stock Exchange in mid-nineties.

Grameenphone's share offloading Grameenphone CEO Eric Aas, who was also present on the occasion, said, "The Grameenphone will also offload its shares not for money. We would like to strengthen the capital market, build up public and corporate confidence and transparency. A lot of things fit into the GP's (share market) listing plan. DTAC is being observed.

Aas pointed out that the biggest Bangladeshi Initial Public Offering was only $15 million. "We don't know how much we would offload but it would certainly be over 15 million dollars," he said

"DTAC shows that Telenor is interested in the local capital market. This is not Vodaphone (or other European companies that had failed to establish themselves in the Asian market), Telenor is different and this is a great example," Aas added.

Brekke said,"We are not a greedy capitalistic company."

Both the CEOs said Telenor is the lone European-American company operating in Asia and growing because it had been very sensitive to local sentiments. Big names like Orange, Verizon, AT&T, Swiss Telecom etc had come to different Asian countries from the late nineties using business and operation strategies of their home countries, and failed.

Telenor on the other hand has tailored itself to the society where it works. Both Grameenphone and DTAC have only around five posts in Bangladesh and Thailand which are held by foreigners, while the rest are local manpower.

DTAC has a subscriber base of 15 million and GP 13 million.

Floating of DTAC's shares is being viewed by GP as a learning process, which is planning to offload some shares in Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) in the near future.

As GP is the largest ever company to plan such floating of shares, it is also trying to fathom the capacity of Bangladesh market buyers and operators, and other issues. Though it has not yet been officially estimated, GP's unofficial capitalisation would be not less than $3 billions. Listing of shares of a fragment of the company of this size could have both negative and positive impacts, sources say.

Operating from '93, DTAC had been a low profile phone company till 2001, a year after Telenor bought a part of its shares and started leading it. The company's IPOs were three times oversubscribed as there had been overwhelming response from all over Thailand despite political uncertainty created by the military takeover.

"We could have waited for a year. But we looked at the fundamentals and went ahead," said Brekke. "The government is very happy. And I have seen people (subscribing the shares) who had never invested before. But they trusted us."

Karren L Hilsen, head of Investor Relations, said that in addition to subscribing through share brokers, people could do the same through two major banks having countrywide network. Consequently, half of the IPOs were subscribed by individuals while the rest by institutions. Typically, the institutions claim most subscriptions.

The Stock Exchange of Thailand has 463 listed companies with a total market capitalisation of $170 billion. DTAC represents 2 percent of the total market capital and ranks among the top 15 companies.