BANGKOK - Soon after Thailand's military seized power last year in a bloodless coup, the Thai Military Bank (TMB) started to bleed cash. Now, the military-affiliated bank's dubious plan to raise US$1 billion in new capital threatens to set off new bouts of political and financial chaos.

TMB - Thailand's fifth-largest bank by assets, which maintains the personal bank accounts of many senior military officials - saw its overall retained losses jump from 44 billion baht (US$1.3 billion) at the end of last September to about 55 billion baht by year's end. The bank announced a 12.3 billion baht financial loss for 2006, a negative-257% swing from the 7.8 billion baht profit turned the previous year. Over the past calendar year, TMB's shares have fallen from about 5 baht to 1.8 baht per share at present.

To cover those losses and expand new lending, TMB unveiled plans this week to raise $1 billion in new capital through a rights issuance and debentures, which if fully subscribed would nearly double the bank's current capitalization. However, the question circulating in Thai banking circles is what foreign investor would possibly subscribe to the offerings in light of the bank's continued poor profitability, weak asset quality and new non-performing-loan risk.

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Maybe now they'll open savings account for tourist visa holders?

DBS might decide to take even more share of it ... don't they own about 15% of the bank already?

Maybe now they'll open savings account for tourist visa holders?

They do already .I opened an A/C with them in Pattaya with just a Tourist visa 3 years ago .Also got an A/C with SCB Bank . Most Thai Banks do ,if you shop around .

DBS might decide to take even more share of it ... don't they own about 15% of the bank already?

Pardon me, doesn't DBS belong to Temasek? There got to be more reasons why DBS don't want to pump in more money into TMB if you think deep into it.

Maybe now they'll open savings account for tourist visa holders?

They do already .I opened an A/C with them in Pattaya with just a Tourist visa 3 years ago .Also got an A/C with SCB Bank . Most Thai Banks do ,if you shop around .

But that was 3 years ago, they also did it 2 years ago, not an year ago. Probably they'll have to start doing it again