The craze over the initial public offering of PTT Plc shares reached fever pitch yesterday when 220 million shares were sold out in only 1 minute 7 seconds, breaking all records in size and public expectation, a sight unseen in almost a decade.

No sooner had Dr Vichit Suraphongchai and Jada Watthanasiritham, both top executives of the Siam Commercial Bank, started to warm their seats in front of a giant screen at the bank’s headquarters than the processing of 12,528 orders was completed.

“I did not even have time to warm up my seat before vrooooom! It was all over,” said Vichit.

Vichit, Jada and other senior executives of SCB who witnessed the processing of the IPO subscriptions of PTT shares on the 22nd floor of the SCB Park Complex said it went amazingly well It went so well thanks to the wide distribution of shares into the hands of small investors nationwide.

Vichit said the processing of the IPO was handled in a transparent manner, as evidenced by the fact that 55 per cent of the orders for lots of from 1,000 to 10,000 shares went to small investors.

The fast processing was due to the thousands of computers at branches of SCB, Bangkok Bank, Thai Farmers Bank, Bank of Ayudhya and Krung Thai Bank on which orders were keyed in almost simultaneously.

SCB is the lead seller of PTT shares with 220 million, which is a portion of the 480 million IPO shares available for domestic investors. The remainder of the 480 million shares, allocated to institutional investors, PTT patrons and the underwriters’ customers, were not up for sale yesterday.

PTT has tentatively set a price of Bt31Bt35 per share with a final price tag to be set on November 21.

The lightning sale of the 220 million shares, however, raised criticism from some local investors who had queued up for the national oil and gas firm’s shares since before dawn, but left emptyhanded.

In response Vichit said: “I can assure you that there was no attempt whatsoever to lock up the orders in advance, otherwise the orders would have been concen?trated in the hands of the big investors.”

According to a PTT statement there were 12,528 applications that were successful in getting shares with a waiting list of 140 million shares.

Those who applied for 1,000 to 5,000 shares accounted for 35 per cent, while those who applied for 5,00110,000, 10,00130,000, 30,00160,000, and 60,001100,000 accounted for 20, 18, 9 and 18 per cent, respectively.

“We were able to sell 220 million shares in 1 minute and seven seconds due to the fact that the five participating banks have a combined total of 2,600 branches nationwide. We also only filled in the number of shares and the identification number of subscribers,” said SCB executive senior vice president of the capital market department Somchai Sanyalaksiri.

Oranan Paweewun, Thanong Khanthong