Bangkok Post, Thailand, Business Briefs Column.

Jul. 26--FRA CHECKS LOANS TO FORMER GF STAFF: The Financial Sector Restructuring Authority (FRA) has been asked to check the legitimacy of loans extended to former staff of General Finance & Securities to buy the company's shares.

In a complaint filed yesterday, a group of former staff said that in 1995, the company offered options to its staff to buy its shares at 35 baht each, with loans available from an affiliate, GCN Finance.

In December 1996, the company said it would seek buyers to buy back the shares from the staff at no less than 50 baht each. Many staff expressed their intention to sell, but their debts owed to GCN Finance remain unsettled today.

Some of the former staff found that the shares pledged against their loans had already been released from collateral. While this meant that their loans had been repaid, their loan contracts remained in force, they said.

SCB EXPECTS NPL RATIO TO FALL TO 15 PERCENT: Siam Commercial Bank expects its non-performing loans to fall to 15 percent of total loans by the end of the year from 20 percent now.

Khunying Jada Wattanasiritham, the bank's president, said that around 10 billion baht in bad loans were expected to be transferred to the state-owned Thai Asset Management Corp.

She said the bank was also planning to reduce staff at the head office once a new information technology system was in place, although she declined to give details. Staff would be reassigned across the bank's 746 branches. SCB currently employs about 3,000 people at its head office and 10,300 staff nationwide.