If they are awake and have been preparing themselves all the time for this fight, they may survive. But if they are just go on along the way improving themselves without preparing for the fight, thinking that there is enough to go around for everybody, they will be decimated. I know that Thai banks are thinking that they are preparing themselves, that they are computerizing very fast, that the remaining families in the banks are no longer families who can tightly control the operations of the Thai banks as before and are families whose new generation had a good education. Those that did not have a good education have already not made it. But in the end, banking is not about computers or education.
Banking is about real client service, client-driven service.
It's about issuing products for customers to choose from all the time and at any time. To be competitive one must have good products, have good control and good corporate governance. Thai banks lose money because major shareholders borrow money from their own banks. Because top managements borrow money from their own banks and go and sit on their borrowers' companies until they don't know where they are working or whom they are working for, the borrower or the lender. Even now, in our preliminary count, as of today, there are still 58 top executives of banks who sit altogether on 272 clients' boards or vice versa including two people who actually are each on 29 companies' boards.