Education and Career in Civil Service and Business
Anand was the youngest child of twelve children of a rich family of Mon heritage from his father's side and Thai-Chinese (Hokkien) from his mother's. According to Anand himself, Anand inherited his Chinese heritage from his maternal grandmother, whose surname was Lau (Chinese: 刘). He attended Dulwich College and later read law at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating with honours in 1955.
Anand spent 23 years in the foreign service, serving at times as the Ambassador of Thailand to the United Nations, Canada, the United States, and West Germany. In January 1976 he was appointed Permanent Secretary of the foreign ministry, and played a leading role in ensuring the US military withdrawal from Thailand. Following that year's October coup Anand was branded a communist by the military during the subsequent political witch hunts, presumably for the Foreign Ministry's role in the normalization of diplomatic relations between Thailand and the People's Republic of China. Although the civil service panel set up to investigate the allegations cleared him of any wrongdoing, Anand was put aside into relatively unimportant posts and in 1979 left the public sector for the private sector. He became the Vice-Chairman of the Saha-Union Group in 1979 and the Chairman of the Board of Directors in 1991. He has been a Director of Siam Commercial Bank since 1984.
Read more about this topic: Anand Panyarachun
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