Scoop Story: Editorial Team Photo: Dhitiwut Bangkham The New Financial World at CMU. The classical-like films, Wall Street 1 and 2 did not only wisely portray the greatness and the fright of financial and capital markets, but also successfully brought the Hollywood actor Michael Douglas, as Gordon Gekko, a legendary Wall Street stockbroker, to be in-spotlight. In Wall Street 2, the role of Gekko was changed from the broker to the mutual fund manager in order to reflect the world of money during the period when the film had been screening. In addition, a variety of perspectives towards financial management of investment banking was remarkably inserted. The Wall Street 1 and 2 have received extensive admirations from worldwide audience. The films can vividly portray the current economic core the financial and the capital markets; meanwhile, reflect swift and unexpected changes of the financial forms. Before security and wealth are successfully constructed, the old ways of thought must be reconsidered. For example, the old way of thought may shape us to think that savings is a result of income minus expense; but we should start to reconsider that expense is, in fact, a result of income minus savings, says Assoc. Prof. Sirikiat Ratchusanti, Director of the Master of Business
Administrations (Finance) program, Faculty of Business Administration, Chiang Mai University in regard to the financial directions in the recent economic world. He explains that the savings should be reconsidered as an expense since its value can be increased unexpectedly. The savings can be spent for life insurance and invested in mutual funds or corporate and etc. All of which can definitely build up the greater wealth in the future. Thus, courses of finance must be designed to be in line with the possibility of recent financial mechanism. The program curriculum must emphasize on the improvement of individual skill and the extension of labor markets to support those who study in this particular field. Assoc. Prof. Sirikiat proudly says that financial program of other institutes principally direct students to the capital market approach, but on the contrary, our program will divide the students into alternative schemes according to the skill of each. For the regional university, this practice should gain more benefits to the students. The number of employment markets in the northern region is surely insufficient if we indulge all students to jump into the capital market or corporate wealth management scheme as needed. The facts that students need diversity and courses of finance do not mean for business organization; but do more and more mean for individual direct us well to launch a new program. The above program, as mentioned by the Director of Master of Business Administration (Finance) program, is a part of the Master of Sciences in Finance program. It strives to produce the modern financial specialists for state and private sectors in both domestic and international financial markets. The program composes of 3 essential schemes: capital market, corporate wealth management, and personal wealth management. All courses of our program are systematically designed to be connected to each other in response to the interests of students to develop 3 professional schemes. The program provides scientific knowledge and methodologies without overlapping contents to enable the students to simply select the right specialized skill. Assoc. Prof. Sirikiat, in addition, suggests those who are interested in this program that though the graduates of all fields are eligible to apply for the program, every successful applicant will be required to attend in the preparation courses for logic subjects, including mathematics, statistics, and English. According to the modern finance or financial engineering, in order to understand all concepts in overall view, the practical knowledge on statistic and mathematic is strongly required. Thus, the students with poor mathematic background may turn their focus to the wealth management
scheme instead. The Finance program of the Faculty of Business Administration, Chiang Mai University intends to produce the graduates who are well equipped with finance knowledge and are able to apply them to solve any of forthcoming financial problems of the financial world. The program also strives to produce new bodies of knowledge, as the modern innovations, for solving out problems that may occur in the future. Meeting Opportunity in Finance @ Chiangmai There is an opportunity in every crisis is often used, as the truth, to describe many of the world s significant incidents. As a consequence of financial crisis in the last decade, innovative financial innovations and products of today finance are released in order to stimulate investment. According to this crisis, more people have started to be aware of their precaution standpoint and think of how to establish personal wealth. Later, such a concern has been widely expanded and then turns to be the popular trend of business. This phenomenon forces all business sectors to urgently develop their human resources to be equipped with the modern financial literacy, especially in aspects of planning and investment. These people must be able to give individual and organizations micro-level advices on how to establish the personal wealth for lives and businesses. This possibility truly brings the development opportunity to many financial related sectors, especially financial education. The Faculty of Business Administration, Chiang Mai University sees this opportunity and grabs the benefit from being the leading higher education institute in the northern Thai region to be the first regional institute that initiates the Master of Science Program in Finance. Today, Assoc. Prof. Sirikiat Ratchusanti, Chair of M.S Finance program is going to tell us about 2 beneficial dimensions of this phenomenon. Opportunity to Develop Financial School Programs Department of Finance and Banking, Faculty of Business Administration, Chiang Mai University has offered the Bachelor s degree in Finance and Banking program for over 10 years. Assoc. Prof. Sirikiat believes that it is about the time that the department should launch the graduate program on Finance. The program recruited the first batch of students in the last academic year and received satisfied feedback from those students. At the moment, we are now calling for the enrollment of the second batch.
We intend to develop the M.S in Finance program with the aim to produce the qualified graduates with wide visions and creativity. We expect our graduates to be able to apply existing data and news, as obtained from the global, regional and local financial markets to analyze and find out appropriate solutions, financial planning and policy determination for a particular organization. In the meanwhile, our graduates must be the specialist in personal wealth management and can also portray themselves as the consultant on personal finance or investment, plus the financial analyst and planner. Last year, we pushed the students to attend in the trainings and take exams to earn official licenses for securities and derivatives investment consultants. Our students could successfully pass the exams at 78% and 62% accordingly. Assoc. Prof. Sirikiat exemplifies more on the changes emerging in this new era. He says that in the past, a product of life insurance was mainly for selling contracts of life and fundamental insurances. However, due to the change of modern life style that motivates people to pay more concerns on savings and increasing saving values, the new financial innovation called unit link is consequently emerged in the life insurance business line. According to the emergence of unit link phenomenon, those who work in the insurance business line are enforced to acquire more knowledge on investment in order to be able to provide trustful investment suggestions. They must be granted the Single License to certify their proficiency as the investment consultant and if possible, should be granted for other financial professional certifications such as Certified Investment and Securities Analyst (CISA). Furthermore, the Office of the Securities and Exchange Commission tends to emphasizes more on promoting and developing financial products to motivate people to spend their savings for investment. Since the innovative investment products are pretty complicated than the products we had in the past, the people involving in today investment business are therefore enforced to gain a better understanding on its mechanism and be able to advice and propose the proper investment directions to investors as their clients. Opportunity of New Business in Chiang Mai The next context that Assoc. Prof. Sirikiat refers to is the growth and the expansion of business in Chiang Mai. Due to the increasing number of immigrants, who are interested in conducting business investment in Chiang Mai, plus the large number of Thai and foreign tourists in this town, the gateway of opportunity is widened for new large and small scale entrepreneurs or SMEs to initiate several businesses.
As sorted by business categories, the restaurant and coffee shop business has still been in demand. This financial expert briefly remarks that the survival of such a trendy business is likely finder s keeper; loser s weepers. Additionally, he explains that indicators of business success are location, quality of food and beverages, and creativity of business owner as found in odds and ends as the remarkable business signature to draw customer s attraction. According to Assoc. Prof. Sirikiat, another significant business to be in focus is accommodation business: hotel, boutique guesthouse or budget hotel and resort. Based upon the fact that major income of Chiang Mai comes from tourism, the one who owns a piece of land or has a large amount of money to buy a piece of land or real estate in Chiang Mai city, of which costs are dramatically increased, should begin to think of launching the accommodation business, especially during the on-going influx of Chinese tourists in Chiang Mai nowadays. It is observed that these Chinese tourists do not travel to Chiang Mai only with a large touring group, but also with a small group of family. If we can successfully reach for the satisfaction of the small group of family tourists by proposing them the small but good service place to stay, this group of tourists will surely recommend your business to others by the word of mouth. Undoubtedly, your accommodation business shall be guaranteed for the fully-booked rooms. According to the increasing number of new entrepreneurs as resulted from the mentioned business opportunities, the Faculty of Business Administration, Chiang Mai University realizes of our mission to provide academic knowledge to the community. The faculty, therefore, organizes training workshops for new entrepreneurs or SMEs with the aim to equip them with core bodies of business knowledge to reduce business risk by teaching them how to do the business plan. Assoc. Prof. Sirikiat emphasizes that before starting any business, you have to know yourselves on how you position yourself and what weakness, strength and restriction that you have. In the meanwhile, it is a must for you to have a distinct picture for your business and have strong intention to work on it. Since today business has been in the midst of uncertain environment: political uncertainty or the economic fluctuation, the marketing strategies must be carefully planned. In the meanwhile, business owners must look forward to the future of their business in the next 3-5 years on how it should be. It is a critic saying that the failure of SMEs business comes from the absences of business target and plan. Lastly, Assoc. Prof. Sirikiat passes on the significant concept that every graduate of the Department of Finance and Banking, Faculty of Business
Administration, Chiang Mai University shall be equipped. Our graduates will be instructed to accept the fact that the highest target of business is the profit. But, the heart of business does not mean for profit maximization, but for wealth maximization. Beyond the profit and the success of business, it is the wealth management for all stakeholders to ensure the sustainable growth of the certain business.