Peter Piti Sithi-amnuai, chairman of Bangkok Bank (BBL), the largest commercial bank in Thailand, and a leading Catholic philanthropist, died of a heart attack on the night of Friday, Sepetember 30. He was 88.
Piti, 88, had been a member of BBL’s board of directors for 37 years and was appointed chairman in 2018.
Piti was a strong supporter of the Catholic Church in Thailand including LiCAS News since the inception of the Catholic news agency for the Church in Asia.
“I saw the work of LiCAS as the basic work of evangelization, and discipleship,” he once said, adding that it’s important that LiCAS News becomes the voice of the voiceless and hope for those in the peripheries.
A servant leader and life-long learner
Chainarong Monthienvichienchai, a founding member of LiCAS News and past world president of UNDA, said Piti was “an excellent example of being a true churchman with a kingdom heart.”
“He supported financially a great number of church projects,” said Monthienvichienchai. “Quite often he liked to repeat some strong marching orders: Don’t ever let a year in your life go by that you are not personally equipping the people in the Church to share their faith,” he added.
From 2013 until his latest appointment, Piti was the chairman of Bangkok Bank Berhad in Malaysia.
“I’m a very simple person and a simple leader, that I have been very effective,” Piti told an interview with his alma mater the Asian Institute of Management.
“People think leadership is a ‘branding’ affair. It is not; it is servitude. You become a servant to your people. That’s what leadership is all about, nothing else. You have to lead. And yet you have to learn, each day.”
Requiem mass and funeral arrangements
A requiem mass and wake service will be held daily at the Holy Redeemer Church in Bangkok from October 1 to October 7 and the funeral mass will be held at the same church on October 8. The family of Piti requests that no funeral wreaths are sent to the church.
