Two new members of the Dancham board was Thursday evening 3 March 2011 elected at the Annual General Meeting of the Danish-Thai Chamber of Commerce held at the Royal Danish Embassy. The new board members are Kenn Thaysen, who recently opened a furniture design studio on Silom together with Julie Ploger and Klaus Stoeve, an old hand who started his career in Thailand at Danfoss but today works as Managing Director at dz card (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd.
Mai Ellegaard, EuroCenter, whose term had come to an end, was re-elected to the board, while Robert Kronberg, Piro Consulting, who has served on the bord for many years, was not re-elected.
The meeting was well attended with close to 60 members participating in the meeting. Over half of then stayed on and participated in the dinner after the event.
President Peter E. Romhild started the meeting with commemorating the loss of Vice President of the Board, Charnchai Charuvastr, who passed away recently, and former Danish Ambassador to Thailand, Niels Dyrlund. He then gave the word to Ambassador Mikael H. Winther, who warmly welcomed the members at the Embassy. He was happy to offer the premises to events like this and would look favorably at requests from members of the business community to make arrangements like product launches or similar activities.
“It will cost you something, of course, but you are welcome,” Mikael Winther said.
The Ambassador also mentioned the recent Oscar award given to the Danish film “In a Better World” for the 2011 Best Foreign Language Film and asked if the members were interested in setting up an event where the movie would be screened.
Eventually, the actual AGM could start with the election – again this year – of founding former President Poul Weber as Chairman of the meeting.
Unlike previous years, President Romhild did not present his yearly report of activities himself this year, but gave the word to the various committees. The work of the events committe was presented by Thomas Nyborg of Pandora, followed by Robert Kronberg, Piro Consaulting, who presented the result of the media commitee, mentioning not least the “invisible” benefits of the new website. Next, Stig Vagt-Andersen presented the activities of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which consisted of.. himself. He highlighted in particular the benefits of the committees under the Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce which any member could contact with specific questions related to their business. Finally Jacob Bojsen presented the activities of the membership committee and listed the various benefits of being a dancham member.
The meeeting the proceeded to the financial report presented by treasurer and Vice President Soren Presmann. He also presented the proposed budget for 2011 which presumed the acceptance of an increase in membership fee from 12.500 Baht to 15.000 Baht for a corporate membership and from 4.000 to 52.000 Baht for an individual membership. Gregers Moller opposed the increase but did not request a vote on the issue as he expected the result to be an endorsement of the increase.
Next item was the election which turned out to have one more member proposed than there were seats on the board and a voting in writing was therefore needed. After a short presentation of the four candidates, of whom only Robert Kronberg and Kenn Thaysen were present, the winners were announced to be Mai Ellegaard, Kenn Thaysen and Klaus Stoeve.
At this time, the initally clear sky had broken into a heavy rain and the ambassador had led an evacuation of the dinner table arrangement from the inundated lawn to the edge of the terrace. While the newly elected board withdrew to decide among themselves who to appoint as their President, the Ambassador further arranged the transformation of the meeting area to a dining area.
Eventually after a splendid dinner from Dusit Thani with wine donated by ScandMedia and beer sponsored by Carlsberg, the evening ajourned around 11 o’clock.
See all the photos from the evening below:
