Content area
Full text
The market in Thailand has altered over the past decade, and a downturn in the late 1990s forced accounting firms to re-evaluate their service offerings. The managing partner of Grant Thornton Thailand speaks to David Hayes about the firm's evolution and how it is benefiting from a shift in market attitudes
After using AMT & Associates as the correspondent firm in Thailand from 1991 to 1995, Grant Thornton set up its own practice with four staff in 1995 at the height of the country's pre-Asian financial crisis economic boom. The firm opened an office in Bangkok and started off as a specialist service provider to foreign companies in Thailand that needed assistance with permits, regulations and other requirements.
"Until 1998 all our clients were international companies or their subsidiaries," explains Ian Pascoe, managing partner of Grant Thornton Thailand. "Then in 1998, following the Thai economic crash, we set up a restructuring and insolvency office in conjunction with Grant Thornton UK and gained a tremendous amount of work. From then on we started to get Thai clients. We have expanded in all service areas since and we have appointed two Thai audit partners."
As many local companies struggled to sort out debts and relaunch their business operations in the aftermath of Thailand's economic crisis, there was also a boost in demand outside the restructuring and insolvency area. "It took 12 months for work to come through after the...