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Thai business leaders warned to overhaul operating models or risk extinction as global shocks become the new normal. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 08, 2026 * Thai business leaders are warned that persistent global shocks - including geopolitical conflict, tech disruption, and ESG pressures - are a permanent reality, rendering traditional operating models obsolete and risking extinction. * To survive, firms must proactively overhaul their business architecture by addressing supply chain vulnerabilities, divesting non-core assets to reallocate capital, and redesigning internal workflows. * Harnessing AI is presented as a critical survival tool, with an emphasis on integrating it with restructured operations to maximize financial returns and considering cost-effective "China Tech" options. * Businesses must adapt to new financial risks from environmental regulations, like the EU's carbon tax, and build resilience by moving away from "Just-in-Time" supply chains to more localized, buffered models. Presentations by Deloitte Thailand and PwC Thailand highlight a shared baseline: Thai enterprises must dismantle legacy models, address supply chain vulnerability, and harness AI to navigate persistent global volatility. Thai enterprises face an urgent, structural choice: overhaul their underlying business models and portfolio strategies or face diminishing competitiveness on the global stage. That was the core consensus delivered by top executives from two of the world's leading professional services networks, Deloitte and PwC, speaking at the Thailand Economic Outlook 2027: New Horizon Beyond the Trap conference organised by Krungthep Turakij. While approaching the challenge from distinct operational perspectives - Deloitte focusing on organisational redesign and cost efficiency, and PwC emphasising supply chain resilience and dealmaking capital allocation - both firms converged on a single macro assessment: the era of brief economic crises followed by a return to "normal" is over. Thai businesses are operating in a permanent environment of elevated geopolitical risk, energy transition pressures, tech-driven skill gaps, and tightening ESG regulations. Deloitte: overhauling operating models to survive 'recurring Black Swans' Metinee Jongsaliswang, managing director of Deloitte Thailand, warned corporate leaders during her keynote, Business Redesign: Challenges, Opportunities and Competitiveness, that traditional crisis-management playbooks are no longer sufficient to navigate modern markets. Metinee Jongsaliswang "Unforeseen shocks like global pandemics, regional conflicts, and extreme weather events are no longer rare occurrences," Metinee said. "What we previously categorised as 'Black Swans' have evolved into 'Recurring Black Swans'. We are not merely managing short-term disruption; we are living through a permanent structural shift." Metinee pointed to three structural headwinds threatening Thai corporate competitiveness: 1. Geopolitical and Trade Volatility: Ranked by 47% of global CEOs in Deloitte's research as their primary operational threat, geopolitical conflict directly inflates energy, transport, and raw material costs. 2. Energy Grid Strain: Driven by AI compute workloads and hyperscale data centres, electricity consumption across Asia-Pacific is projected to surge from 20% today to 45% by 2050, making clean, reliable power a baseline competitive metric. 3. Advanced Tech Talent Deficit: A severe skill bottleneck that cannot be solved purely by hiring, requiring comprehensive public and private workforce upskilling. To move beyond defensive survival, Deloitte outlined three strategic imperatives for local firms: Realising AI Value via 'China Tech': While AI adoption in Thailand grew from 47% to 60% over the past year, Deloitte data reveals that only 19% of firms have successfully scaled AI across their enterprise. To manage deployment costs, Metinee advised evaluating Chinese technology options ("China Tech"), which deliver 80% to 90% of Western technology performance at roughly one-third of the total cost. She recommended a hybrid approach - deploying cost-effective China Tech for baseline operations alongside specialised Western Tech for complex functions. Capital Optimisation via Divestments: Over 70% of Asia-Pacific business leaders are planning major asset divestments over the next 12 to 18 months. Selling off underperforming or non-core assets allows firms to redeploy capital into high-growth digital ecosystems, similar to how Singapore Airlines built its $1.6 billion KrisFlyer digital ecosystem. Redesigning Workflows for 2.5x Returns: Deloitte's research proves that firms that restructure their internal operating models alongside AI implementation achieve 2.5 times higher financial returns than those that layer technology onto legacy workflows - citing examples like Uniqlo's RFID-driven inventory tracking and Luckin Coffee's localised real-time queue management. Chanchon Chotikapanich PwC: fixing supply chain 'Choke Points' as capital pivots to resilient assets. Taking the global trade and dealmaking perspective, Chanchon Chotikapanich, Deals Leader at PwC Thailand, presented findings from the latest PwC Global CEO Survey (polling nearly 5,000 CEOs across 109 countries) during her session, Intelligent Infrastructure: The New Growth Advantage in the Digital Economy. Chanchon cautioned that legacy export models centred purely on low-cost production leave Thai businesses highly vulnerable to external economic trade shocks. PwC highlighted three primary megatrends disrupting established commercial markets: 1. Geopolitical Fragmentation and 'Choke Points': Rising tariffs, trade disputes, and shipping route disruptions are forcing firms to identify vulnerable operational bottlenecks. "The operational impact of global disruptions differs between firms," Chanchon stated. "It is the difference between having your arm squeezed for five minutes versus being choked for five minutes. Corporate leadership must identify their specific operational 'Choke Points' to prepare effective continuity contingencies." 2. AI Workflow Transformation: Beyond automation, AI is fundamentally altering R&D and business models. With the World Economic Forum estimating that 40% of core workforce skills face obsolescence, industries from pharmaceuticals to retail must overhaul how work gets done. 3. The Financialisation of Carbon: Environmental compliance has shifted from PR to the balance sheet. The European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) poses a direct financial risk to over 200 billion baht ($5.88 billion) in Thai exports if domestic suppliers fail to measure and lower carbon emissions across their entire supply chain (Scope 1, 2, and 3). In response to these threats, over 60% of global CEOs are actively restructuring supply chains - moving away from ultra-lean "Just-in-Time" models to localised, resilient supply networks built with inventory buffers. Concurrently, global institutional capital is flowing heavily into defence, aerospace, and specialised tech sectors, with Aerospace & Defense M&A seeing 26% profit margins and a $1 trillion international order backlog. To adapt, Chanchon urged Thai executives to evaluate corporate portfolios. Units that fail to align with digital or ESG requirements should be divested or spun off into Joint Ventures (JVs) to share capital expenditure and eliminate duplicate operational costs - a strategy already picking up momentum across Thailand's energy, petrochemical, and logistics sectors. Before approving future growth plans, PwC advised executive boards to test investments against three key questions: Choke Point Resilience: Can core operational choke points survive if geopolitical or trade conditions shift overnight? Capability Acquisition: Does this investment yield a net-new technological edge or structural advantage we currently lack? Contingency Allocation: Where specifically should capital be deployed to build operational redundancies against external shocks? Leadership execution: active redesign over reactive adaptation. Both Deloitte and PwC concluded that passive adaptation is no longer a viable corporate strategy for Thai business leaders. While reactive changes may allow a firm to survive short-term market stress, securing long-term financial returns and global market share requires corporate boards to proactively redesign their business architectures, reallocate capital into resilient assets, and embed digital and ESG compliance into the core of their daily operations. MOST VIEWED

PwC and Esri expand alliance for AI-powered geospatial insights. NEW YORK - PwC and Esri today announced an expanded alliance to bring geospatial insights to the intelligent enterprise, helping energy and infrastructure organizations connect strategy, operations, and technology through AI and rich location intelligence. As part of this new collaboration, PwC becomes the first of a small group of select system integrators (SI) that have demonstrated sustained excellence in GIS implementation and client delivery to collaborate with Esri at the highest levels of both business and technology engagements. The designation reflects PwC's deep systems integration expertise and its commitment to scaling AI solutions that geo-enable the intelligent enterprise, with a focused emphasis on the energy and infrastructure markets. The Esri Partner Network (EPN) helps customers around the world utilize the benefits of the ArcGIS enterprise platform to enhance their planning, design and operations with location intelligence. For over 50 years, the Esri Partner Network has supported users with business solutions, implementation services, and dynamic content by leveraging GIS technology across industries - and PwC's expanded strategic alliance with Esri reflects a shared focus on expanding the future value of GIS for energy and infrastructure organizations. "Esri is excited to collaborate with PwC as the first premier SI to enter into this new level of strategic relationship," said Brian Cross, Esri Corporate Director of Services. "We are proud to recognize PwC's commitment to advancing the impact of ArcGIS, and we look forward to deepening our collaboration to bring AI and geospatial capabilities to the intelligent enterprise for our mutual customers across energy and infrastructure. We see this as an important step in scaling the impact of GIS to more of the world's most pressing challenges." Bringing AI development expertise to the GIS industry. PwC is bringing its AI development capabilities to the GIS industry, building and deploying AI-enabled solutions on top of ArcGIS to help clients extract more value from spatial data and scale intelligent decision-making across the enterprise. The Platinum designation reflects PwC's commitment to scaling these AI geospatial solutions as a core part of how it helps clients geo-enable the intelligent enterprise. Geo-enabling the intelligent enterprise for energy and infrastructure sectors. PwC and Esri are helping energy and infrastructure organizations connect strategy, technology, operations, and governance into a single geo-enabled system, turning location intelligence into a driver of the intelligent enterprise. PwC's Platinum designation reflects a shared focus with Esri on advancing the intelligent enterprise specifically for energy and infrastructure customers, where connecting spatial data to operational decision-making carries outsized value. "We're excited to build on our relationship with Esri as we step into Esri's Platinum tier for systems integrators," said Imran Ilyas, PwC US Business & Supply Chain Operations Platform Principal. "Together with Esri, we're bringing geospatial capabilities to the intelligent enterprise - pairing PwC's AI development expertise with ArcGIS to help clients connect strategy, operations, and technology through location intelligence and turn that intelligence into business results." Scaling systems integration and utility network delivery. For more than 14 years, PwC's GIS team has provided geospatial strategy, spatial data analytics, network information management system implementations (utility network), and enterprise system integration for a wide range of customers. That track record of systems integration delivery, now paired with PwC's AI development expertise, is what positions PwC to advance the industry and help clients realize the most value out of their ArcGIS investments. About esri. Esri, the global market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, location intelligence, and mapping, helps customers unlock the full potential of data to improve operational and business results. Founded in 1969 in Redlands, California, USA, Esri software is deployed in hundreds of thousands of organizations globally, including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, nonprofit institutions, and universities. Esri has regional offices, international distributors, and partners providing local support in over 100 countries on six continents. With its pioneering commitment to geospatial technology and analytics, Esri engineers the most innovative solutions that leverage a geographic approach to solving some of the world's most complex problems by placing them in the crucial context of location. Visit us at esri.com. About PwC. At PwC, we help clients build trust and reinvent so they can turn complexity into competitive advantage. We're a tech-forward, people-empowered network with more than 364,000 people in 136 countries and 137 territories. Across audit and assurance, tax and legal, deals and consulting, we help clients build, accelerate, and sustain momentum. Find out more at www.pwc.com.

PwC and Cohere announce a global alliance to accelerate secure and trusted enterprise AI adoption. Oct 05, 2026, 08:02 ET Strategic partnership pairs Cohere's secure enterprise-grade AI platform and solutions with PwC's transformation expertise, launching first in Canada. TORONTO, Oct. 5, 2026 /CNW/ - PwC and Cohere, the world's leading sovereign AI company, today announced a global alliance, starting with Canada, to help organizations deploy secure enterprise AI and turn AI investment into measurable business value. The alliance combines Cohere's security-first, sovereign enterprise AI platform and models with PwC's deep industry, risk, regulatory, technology and transformation expertise to help clients apply AI securely and responsibly in complex enterprise environments. Many organizations have tested AI but struggle to move from isolated pilots to scaled adoption and measurable returns. They need to identify where AI can have the greatest impact, connect it securely to trusted data and systems, and understand the regulatory, risk, privacy, cyber and governance requirements that determine where and how AI can be used responsibly. PwC and Cohere will help clients address these challenges while meeting the security, compliance and data sovereignty requirements of regulated industries. "AI has the potential to reshape how organizations operate and create value, but realizing that potential requires more than technology," said Domenic Marino, Senior Partner and CEO, PwC Canada. "By combining PwC's industry, transformation and risk expertise with Cohere's secure enterprise AI capabilities, we can help clients move from experimentation to measurable outcomes, particularly in regulated industries where trust and data sovereignty are essential." Bringing trust and business context to enterprise AI Cohere will provide the secure AI foundation, including its North agentic AI platform, enterprise models and search and retrieval capabilities. PwC will help clients identify high-value uses, assess risk and regulatory requirements, redesign workflows, establish governance and controls, connect the technology to enterprise data and systems, and support implementation at scale. Together, the companies will help clients improve current operations while preparing for broader business reinvention. "Enterprises need AI that can deliver real capability without forcing them to give up control of their data, infrastructure or security," said Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO at Cohere. "Cohere is built for that environment, with cutting-edge foundation models and end-to-end AI products designed to run where organizations need them and work with the data that powers their business. Together with PwC, we can help companies move from promising use cases to AI that is securely deployed at production scale, deeply integrated and delivering real value." Clients will be able to apply AI to immediate needs such as enterprise search, knowledge access, deep research, decision support and task automation. For larger transformation opportunities, PwC will help organizations determine where AI can improve or automate existing workflows, where human judgment remains essential, and how performance, accountability and controls should be defined. "Building trust in AI starts with ensuring it operates securely within an organization's own technology and data environments, with clear governance, explainability, and human oversight built in from the start," said Annie Veillet, Chief Technology Officer, PwC Canada. "Cohere's flexible, sovereign deployment options, combined with PwC's implementation and AI risk management capabilities, enable clients to connect AI to the systems and knowledge that power their business without compromising control, transparency, or accountability." What the alliance will enable * Deploy secure enterprise search, knowledge access, content generation, decision support and task automation. * Connect AI to enterprise data, knowledge and core business systems so outputs are grounded in organizational context. * Redesign workflows while defining appropriate roles for automation, human judgment, governance and accountability. * Support private-cloud, on-premises and air-gapped deployments that give organizations greater control over sensitive data and infrastructure. * Scale successful uses over time and measure outcomes against business priorities, including productivity, cost, service delivery and decision-making. About PwC Canada At PwC Canada, we help clients build trust and reinvent so they can turn complexity into competitive advantage. We're a tech-forward, people-empowered network with more than 6,500 partners and staff in offices across the country. Across audit and assurance, tax and legal, deals and consulting, we help build, accelerate and sustain momentum. PwC refers to the Canadian member firm and may sometimes refer to the PwC network. Each member firm is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details. Find out more by visiting us at: http://www.pwc.com/ca (C) 2026 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, an Ontario limited liability partnership. All rights reserved. About Cohere Cohere, founded in 2019, is the world's leading sovereign AI company building foundation models and end-to-end AI products to solve real-world business problems. We partner with organizations to deliver seamless integration, deep customization, and user-friendly solutions. Our all-in-one platform provides maximum security, privacy, and deployment flexibility across clouds, private on-premises environments, and even fully air-gapped settings. Headquartered globally in Toronto, San Francisco, and Germany, Cohere operates additional offices in London, New York, Montreal, Paris, and Seoul, serving customers worldwide. The company has raised ~$1.6BUSD from strategic tech investors (Nvidia, AMD Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Oracle, Cisco), institutional investors (Radical Ventures, Inovia Capital, PSP Investments, HOOPP, BDC, Nexxus), and AI pioneers including Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Pieter Abbeel, and Raquel Urtasun. For more information, visit cohere.com. SOURCE PwC Management Services LP Media contacts: PwC Canada, Anuja Kale-Agarwal, National Communications Director, PwC Canada, Email: [email protected]; Cohere, Patrick Allen, Communications Manager, Canada, Email: [email protected]