ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of firms in Thailand, including family business groups, state-owned enterprises, multinational enterprises (MNEs), and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It explores the following salient characteristics of the corporate landscape: (1) there is enormous concentration of corporate wealth where a few large firms occupy a disproportionately large share of the country’s total output; (2) there has been an absent of indigenous ownership of corporate wealth – big business corporations have been owned and run by descendants of migrants, mostly with ethnic Chinese origins; (3) complex business groups are a pervasive form of corporate structure – pyramids and cross shareholdings across firms are used extensively; (4) government-business symbiotic relationships and corruption are commonly practiced and accepted; (5) the export sector has been dominated by MNEs and not domestic capitalists; (6) there has been an absence of global brands of Thai products – with very few exceptions, most large Thai firms are only known locally but not internationally; and (7) SMEs—though small in size—are large in number and provide employment to the majority of Thai workers. The chapter suggests that the Thai economy is fundamentally inefficient, unequally distributed, and fragile. These problems raise concern over the future performance of the Thai economy.
