Corruption charges are now being filed against him; his Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party faces possible dissolution in a trial over alleged electoral shenanigans; and several big chunks of TRT, including Mr Somkid's faction, have broken away.Nevertheless, he remains popular, and he has pots of money from selling his telecoms interests.
It will keep Polycom — one of the giants in video and voice conferencing — as an independent operation — regardless of what happens to that operation in the future as part of a portfolio of other telecoms interests owned by a private equity giant.
On the other, it is trying to hang on to bits of the empire, notably Cegetel, its French telecoms interest, which once made sense only because of potential synergies with media, a strategy now discredited.The poker-game over Cegetel may grab the headlines.
There are a handful of high-profile foreign ventures in telecommunications and other industries, but the government sent a chill through the investment community when it used an attempt by an Egyptian entrepreneur, Naguib Sawiris, to sell his global mobile telecom interests as an opportunity try to nationalize his lucrative Algerian operation, Djezzy.
In March, the telecom interests were spun off, and Southern Water was sold off for $3 billion £2.1.1 billion).
(Chris Dodd took on the telecom interests by leading the charge against immunity for lawbreaking phone companies. Does he really want decades of credibility jeopardized by a system that forces him to beg for cash from AIG?).
He thinks that price discrimination might not be in telecoms companies' interests after all.
The telecoms are interested in Straight Path because the Virginia-based company holds valuable spectrum licenses that will play an important role in laying the groundwork for 5G services.
Then comes a review of public-sector pay, making the central bank independent of the government, scrapping the dual exchange rate, allowing treasury-bill rates to move closer to market levels, and starting to privatise telecoms and power.Foreign interest in Nigeria is beginning to pick up.
Vekselberg's fellow Ukrainian Fridman, ranked 50th overall at $9.7 billion, founded Alfa Group in 1999 with college friends German Khan and Alexei Kuzmichov; it's now a diverse conglomerate with oil, retail, telecom and banking interests.
Tech firms and telecoms have shown interest in snatching up Yahoo.
