Chaiwat Kovavisarach and Bangchak’s Transformation Journey

The interview offered many thought-provoking insights. In this issue, Bangchak Reflections shares some of its highlights.Although the interview began with Bangchak Hong Kong, the interviewer’s first question took the conversation back more than two decades, to Chaiwat’s initial involvement with Bangchak during the Asian financial crisis, known in Thailand as the “Tom Yum Kung crisis”.

At the time, Bangchak was heavily indebted, generated very little cash and was widely regarded as being on the verge of closure. Chaiwat did not join as an executive; he was an investment banker engaged to help find a way to restructure the company financially.One initiative he recalled with pride was the issuance of Thailand’s first Depository Receipt (DR), a financial innovation that played an important role in Bangchak’s restructuring, enabling the company to recover and emerge from the Tom Yum Kung crisis.

For Chaiwat, however, the turnaround was only the beginning. The real challenge was to enable Bangchak to grow and remain competitive over the long term.He returned to Bangchak in 2012 as a member of the Board of Directors, before being appointed President and Chief Executive Officer in 2015 and assuming his current role in 2022. His task had clearly shifted from “turnaround” to “growth”.

Asked what he initially believed Bangchak needed in order to compete in the global energy market, his answer was not a major investment or business expansion. It was agility.Chaiwat acknowledged that Bangchak was not the largest company and could not compete on scale. What it did possess was agility: the ability to adapt and make decisions quickly.