Thailand’s biggest landlords.

Chang beer family builds huge property portfolio

From Bangkok to Siem Riep, from London to New York, you may book into one of the posh hotel properties of Thailand’s liquor tycoon Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi.

Currently, his family’s multibillionUS - dollar property portfolio covers 24 hotels, including nine in major foreign cities, as well as 13 shopping centres, three office buildings and three golf courses.

The entire portfolio is under the management of Wallapa Traisorat, Charoen’s eldest daughter, who took over the family’s property and hotel and related businesses in 2001.

Known as one of the country’s biggest landlords, Charoen and his wife, Wanna, own thousands of plots of land in Thailand, thanks to their highly lucrative liquor business, based on Chang beer.

The family started buying property decades ago, and it took Wallapa three years from 2001 to categorise most of her parents’ vast array for a proper database, so that she could manage the portfolio professionally.

“My parents like to buy land and other properties, so they’ve often lost count of how many plots are already purchased,” said Cambridge-educated Wallapa, who is in her 30s with two brothers amd sisters. “Sometimes, we found that brokers had offered to sell our own land plots to us.”

Besides liquor, beer and non-alcoholic beverages, all of which generate the most revenue, the family has turned to hotels and other properties as another cash cow, planning to invest Bt100 billion over the next decade in various projects worth an estimated Bt200 billion.

The family is also turning vast plots of its agricultural land in Thailand into plantations for raw materials to produce ethanol for the alternative-fuel sector, which is booming due to skyrocketing oil prices.

For the Sirivadhanabhakdi family, good immovable assets appear to have more long-term allure than do stocks, bonds or other financial assets.