Lai See | Hong Kong-linked company appears on Thai SEC alert list

We see that one of Mark Kirkham's companies has come to the attention of Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). PFS International Consultants can now be found on the Thai SEC's alert list. The SEC website says that PFS was put on the alert list for conducting securities and derivative business without a licence from the commission.

The purpose of the alert list is to warn investors not to do business with the approximately 50 unlicensed companies on the list. PFS International is related to Platinum Financial Services, which is a Hong Kong-based insurance broker and is licensed by the Hong Kong Confederation of Insurance Brokers. Kirkham sits on the general committee of the conferderation.

The confederation's primary aim, according to its website, is "to ensure the highest level of professional conduct among its members and to provide the community with a class of insurance brokers whom they can rely upon".

Platinum Financial Services is part of a group of companies that belong to Business Class Group, of which Kirkham is chief executive. Kirkham told that since PFS International was an insurance broker, it did not engage in securities or derivative business in Thailand and his company had been in discussion with the Thai SEC to get its name removed from the list. He added that the commission had not written to the company or asked it to stop doing business.

The published a story in August last year reporting that companies that were part of Kirkham's Business Class Group had sold stakes in the Centaur Litigation fund to four investors in Hong Kong, who were interviewed by the , even though the fund was not authorised by the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), and the investors had not signed professional investor declaration forms.

Kirkham denied that the fund was sold by consultants working for him. Centaur went into liquidation and has been the subject of inquiries by the SFC, which has yet to reveal its findings.