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Key points made during interview with Dr. Prajya
Phinyawat
Senior Executive Vice President, PTT Petrochemicals &
Refining Business Group
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Intellectual Weight
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Surakiart is a serious intellectual,
full of energy and ideas, with an insatiable curiosity
for other people’s views and an enthusiasm to share
his own. My initial impression of Surakiart was
that he was an exceedingly incisive, intelligent
person, someone who had obviously excelled in academia
– and he was also full of energy, sociable, visibly
enjoyed meeting and interacting with people, sharing
his opinions with them, learning from them. |
Experience and Administrative Skill
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Surakiart understands the essence of complex
problems quickly and knows to take steps in the
right direction to address them effectively. He
became Chairman of a company involved in a very
complex industry. Despite the fact that he did not
have the requisite technical background to understand
and manage the details of the company’s daily activities,
he had the keen ability to see the essence of deals
we were involved in, of the projects we were undertaking.
He understood the importance of the strategies involved
in our business and supported the management team
to ensure that projects were executed as smoothly
as possible. |
Conflict Resolution
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Surakiart can mediate sensitive disputes effectively
because he knows he has to involve all stakeholders
and he understands the importance of impartiality.
We were involved in negotiations between the Buyer
of National Gas (PTT) and a consortium of Sellers
of Gas comprising UNOCAL of U.S., Total Fina Elf
of France, Premier Oil of UK, PTTEP of Thailand,
and Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise in the context
of a dispute under a take-or-pay contract. The completion
of a pipeline project was delayed, but PTT was already
expected to begin payments under a gas purchase
contract, which it could not afford to do. There
were 8 rounds of negotiations which failed to reach
any solution. Surakiart got involved to help resolve
the dispute with requests from both Buyer and Sellers.
His success lay in the fact that he was quickly
able to gain the trust of representatives on the
other side in spite of his role as Chairman of PTTEP
and Executive Chairman of PTT |
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Surakiart understands that trust is vital to mediate
disputes and he knows how to build trust among all
parties in dispute to reach a solution. Building
trust among stakeholders is among his key strengths
in my view – he is a good listener, he can make
clear that he understands the concerns, and this
then helps him come up with solutions that will
benefit both sides, which is in fact what he did
in the PTT-Myanmar dispute. I later learned from
him that he applied the same tactics he had used
in helping resolve conflict in Cambodia with the
four factions – talking to the parties separately,
clearly identifying their concerns and devising
a compromise that would make both sides (or all
sides) better off. The parties involved then chose
to adopt the solution he proposed because he was
able to persuade them with substance and with impartiality
– with strong reasons why a particular outcome will
benefit all parties. |
Commitment to Social Issues
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Since our student days, Surakiart’s commitment
was to alleviate poverty, to foster development,
and to find the means to improve the quality of
life of citizens – a commitment he has long
lived by and defended. I have always been impressed
by his mastery of current issues of concern, by
his well-reasoned opinions on a variety of matters,
and by his determination to persuade others and
his openness to hear views that differ from his
own. |
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Surakiart plans his involvement in dispute resolution
seriously and engages the parties to a dispute to
devise enduring solutions. Surakiart will take the
initiative to get involved in the resolution of
conflicts, and it is something he is naturally skilled
in – indeed one can tell he enjoys the responsibility
and the challenge. He is good-natured, friendly,
has a keen and curious mind, but he is determined,
and will not let bureaucratic hurdles and trivia
compromise an overall sound solution. But he can
do this only because he is very well-prepared before
the implementation phase – he engages management
and others that he works with, he consults with
the relevant stakeholders, he builds momentum and
consensus and is then able to overcome hurdles that
arise – because he already has fostered a sense
of project that will support seeing a project or
an idea through to completion. |
Internationalism and Vision
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Surakiart is an internationalist open to opportunities
who was able to significantly change the international
outlook and direction of PTTEP by pushing the enterprise
to look to investment opportunities abroad. As Chairman
of PTTEP, he had a long-term vision for the company.
The prevailing view when he became Chairman was
that the company should focus on the Thai market
– that going international was too risky and that
PTTEP could simply not compete at that level. But
Surakiart saw it differently. His long-term vision
was that the company would benefit from going international,
and that it had to prepare rather than shy away
from such a strategy. With the help of others in
management who also espoused his view, he promoted
the company internationally on roadshows and paved
the way to a surprisingly successful – indeed oversubscribed
– public offering of shares in the wake of the Asian
financial crisis. This led to a definite change
in the strategies of the company and made it more
outward-looking, open to new opportunities for investment. |
Commitment to Excellence
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Among Surakiart’s greatest achievements
was to give the Faculty of Law at Chulalongkorn
University a renewed sense of pride in its teaching
and its potential – he was instrumental in
securing public funding for a new building that
would house a variety of legal research centers
and provide them the resources for their work. His
contributions as Dean were inspiring, and his ability
to persuade successive Thai governments with very
different political agendas to support his initiatives
show a versatility in helping politicians see common
ground, working toward a goal for the benefit of
the common interest, for all Thais. He was able
to do this, I think, by putting forth concrete proposals
and pitching the law faculty as the principal law
center in Thailand, and he was ultimately successful. |
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At the time he was Chairman, PTTEP was consistently
voted among the most well-managed companies in Asia,
and that trend continues today. The public offering
in 1998 was voted the best primary equity issue
in Finance Asia. |
Personal/UN Candidacy
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Surakiart is intelligent, charismatic, and compassionate
– traits that I think would make him an excellent
Secretary-General of the United Nations. Surakiart
has several key strengths – keen intelligence, charismatic
presence, the ability to make people feel at ease,
the ability to listen and to understand the issues
and quickly get to their essence, and to take the
right steps to articulate solutions that will serve
both short and long-term purposes. |
Contact: Prajya Phinyawat
Senior Executive Vice President
Petrochemicals & Refining Business Group
PTT Public Company Limited
555 Vibhavadi Rangsit Rd.
Chatuchak, Bangkok 10900
Thailand
Tel: +66 (0) 2537-3935-6
Fax: +66 (0) 2537-3934
E-mail: prajya.p@pttplc.com
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