Bangkok-At the height of the 1997 Asian crisis, some of the first pieces of advice the International Monetary Fund offered Thailand was to shutter 56 finance companies because of their reckless lending practices. As the extent of Thailand's financial abuse came to light, the finance companies came to epitomize all that went wrong. Now, almost five years later, the Thai finance sector is making a dramatic comeback, and winning plenty of investor interest in the process. Thai finance companies have been some of the hottest stocks on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, outperforming the index, which has posted a gain of about 23% so far this year. The Thai finance industry has transformed beyond precrisis recognition: where there were once 92 competing outfits, there are now just seven doing business. Unlike Thai banks, finance companies took the capital hit willingly in the heat of the crisis, writing their battered loan books down to zero before raising new capital. Now, with comparatively stronger capital positions to Thai banks, which are still nurturing nonperforming loans, finance companies are doing what their banking brethren aren't: lending money aggressively.
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