Bangkok, March 3, 2014 ? The SEC Board approved the amendments to regulations on trustee of real estate investment trusts (REITs) to enhance flexibility and facilitate REIT development.

Vorapol Socatiyanurak, SEC Secretary-General said that ?The SEC Board approved the amendments to regulations governing REIT trustees to allow more participation in transactions with REITs, providing that they must be independent from the owner of assets to be invested by REITs. Moreover, REIT trustees must have in place preventive measures or sufficient check and balance mechanism, in cases of entering into transactions with conflicts of interest.  In this regard, relevant information must be disclosed to REIT unitholders and must not be opposed by the said unitholders according to the specified criteria.

REIT trustees will be allowed to manage REITs? non-real estate assets, providing that there must be a separation of management and compliance units while Chinese wall must also be in place. Outsourcing of the management to asset management licensee will be permissible, subject to the specified rules. In addition, REIT holding limit will be relaxed where a REIT trustee will be able to hold up to 50 percent of the total number of REIT units sold, the limit applicable to other unitholders. The relaxation aims at enabling trustee participation in firm commitment deals of underwriting REIT units. 

The above amendments will facilitate REIT establishment and support businesses. Henceforth, the SEC will prescribe further more detailed guidelines.?