With this week's takeover of iTV, Thailand's new military rulers have made their first move toward dismantling the telecommunication and media empires that once provided the behind-the-scenes financial firepower for ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's once powerful, now diminished, political juggernaut.
iTV represented a small part of the Shin Corp's corporate expanse, which currently includes major holdings in telecoms, satellites, aviation, property development, consumer finance and the Internet. Its mobile telecoms subsidiary, Advanced Info Services (AIS), provides the lion's share of the conglomerate's profits and catapulted Thaksin to billionaire status before he divested his shares to family members when he took up the premiership in 2001.
The company's profits soared during Thaksin's political tenure, padded by his government's policies aimed at pumping up domestic consumption through aggressive state-bank lending and assorted cheap-credit schemes. With Shin Corp's share price near a record high, and popular political pressure mounting against Thaksin, in January 2006 his family sold the company to Singapore's state-run Temasek Holdings in a controversial US$1.9 billion transaction.
Full Story : Asia Times Online
Won't be long before the internet is next to useless here.
Dismantling Shin Corp
Dismantling Shin Corp
Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed? - Hunter S Thompson
Re: Dismantling Shin Corp
I've been thinking for several months now that the internet and internet access is almost a Human Rights issue.buksida wrote:Won't be long before the internet is next to useless here.
The world is fast becoming a place where you soon won't be able to function in society without it.
Would make for an interesting argument in a law suit filed in Thai court to get CAT and others to wake up and stop playing the "I'm greedy' game. Pete
On another thread, a long time ago, I mentioned that a government minister under Toxin's regime had recently returned from a visit to China.
Guess what? He publically announced that he'd been impressed with the Chinese way of censoring the net and he wanted to work closer with them in future.
We've still got the hangover now.
"Education?" Thought that was the opium of the masses. Then again, maybe I've got the quote a little out of context.
Guess what? He publically announced that he'd been impressed with the Chinese way of censoring the net and he wanted to work closer with them in future.
We've still got the hangover now.
"Education?" Thought that was the opium of the masses. Then again, maybe I've got the quote a little out of context.
