Thailand telecom majors Total Access Communication (dtac) and True Corporation said on Thursday that their merged entity will likely be called “True Corporation Public Company Limited”.
The companies have informed the Thai stock exchange that there will be a joint shareholder meeting on February 23, in which board members of True and dtac will discuss details of the amalgamation.
The two companies aim to complete the transaction within the first quarter of 2023. Until the amalgamation is completed, both companies will continue to operate separately.
Manat Manavutiveth, current co-president of True Corp, has been nominated as the new company’s CEO, Sharad Mehrotra as deputy-CEO, and Nakul Sehgal and Yupa Leewongcharoen as co-CFOs. The likelihood of Manavutiveth taking over as the CEO of the merged entity was reported by DealStreetAsia earlier this month.
The principal shareholders — Bangkok-listed conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Group, which has a 49.99% stake in Thailand’s second_biggest telco by subscribers; and Telenor Group, which has a 46.71% stake in dtac, will have an equal ownership stake of around 30% in the new company.
The other shareholders include China Mobile, which held an 18% stake in True Corp as of March 2022, while state-owned National Telecom and Thai NVDR Company, a unit of the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), have minority stakes each of around 5% in Dtac.
If the merger is completed, Thai telecom will see a duopoly emerge as True Corp battles with Advanced Info Service (AIS), which is currently Thailand’s leading telco by subscribers. With the merger, True Corp is expected to have a subscriber base of 53.6 million, compared with AIS’s 45.7 million subscribers, based on the Q3 2022 results of the companies.
The release also said the board of directors of True and dtac have proposed a joint shareholder meeting to elect Suphachai Chearavanont, Jørgen Arentz Rostrup, Kittipong Kittayarak, Kamonwan Wipulakorn, Kalin Sarasin, Pratana Mongkokul, Adhiruth Thothaveesansuk, Gao Tongqing, Tone Ripel, Lars Erik Tellmann, and Teerapon Tanomsakyut as directors in the new merged entity.