Managing director Paritat Lerngutai said that in each of the remaining three months of this year, the company aims to launch 10 products.

"Our targeted customers are medium to high-income investors," said Paritat. "We have created a private membership club. Investors must open an account with us of at least Bt5 million. Then customers can choose the product type and investment conditions to suit the risk that they can take. However, most will be capital guarantee products."

In the past 11 months since it started operations, SCBQ, 100 per cent owned by Siam Commercial Bank's unit SCB Asset Management, has attracted Bt1.35 billion in assets to manage from 37 accounts. It aims within five years to break into the private fund industry's top five and reach the top in seven years. It currently ranks at 16 out of 24 private fund operators.

As of July 30, Kasikorn Asset Management ranked at the top with Bt29.07 billion in assets under its management, Tisco Asset Management was at second with Bt22.55 billion, and SCB Asset Management at ninth with B3.35 billion, according to the Association of Investment Management Companies.

 Paritat said that his company's derivatives investment strategy offered a low risk but satisfactory returns as it clearly makes contracts with investors, specifying in what the company would invest. He said that the new products to be launched would attract more customers.

 "Among those products, for example, we offer a short-term investment to investors with the opportunity to receive as much as a 10-per-cent return and the principal investment is guaranteed. Or there's an additional product for investors, who have already invested in the stock market. This type of product can generate 3-10 per cent return per annum for investors. Also, we have a service that hedges on stock prices," said Paritat.

In other news, Asian investors are more conservative about putting their money into private equity than their counterparts in the United States, Barings Private Equity Asia said in a published report quoted by Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

"Singapore is probably ahead of the rest, but a lot of countries in Asia only invest in fixed incomes and equities, with no allocation to alternative investments," chief executive Jean Eric Salata told The Business Times.

"In the US, you have big pension funds that allocate as much as 20 to 30 per cent of total pension fund money, or maybe even 50 per cent."

Siriporn Chanjindamanee

 The Nation