VietNamNet Bridge – Approximately 100 CEOs or Chairs of 90 listed companies were forced to remove from the office in 2012.

The leave of Truong Dinh Anh, General Director of the biggest technology group in Vietnam FPT after 20 months in the post, once stirred up the public

2012 was an unlucky year for many businessmen. About 100 leaders lost their positions in the year. This is really a small number if noting that Vietnam has 700 businesses listing their shares on the bourse, which means that only 15 percent of the leaders have left.

However, there were really a lot of big changes in the key personnel of enterprises, if counting on the changes to other positions, including the member of board of directors or other important seats.

The businesses in the fields of technology, banking, securities and real estate proved to be the ones that witnessed the most changes in ranks and positions.

General Director of An Phu Radiation Company--Vuong Dinh Khoat, lost his position just after six months at the office, after the board of directors found that the company only fulfilled 1/5 of the targeted business plan.

The leave of Truong Dinh Anh, General Director of the biggest technology group in Vietnam FPT after 20 months in the post, once stirred up the public.

Anh took the credit for turning FPT’s Internet Center with the revenue of VND100 million in the first year of operation into FPT Telecom, a subsidiary of FPT with the revenue of $100 million in 2008. This was why Anh was put into the position of FPT’s CEO.

Anh was hoped to help add FPT group into the list of top 500 of Forbes Global 2000. The group also hoped to obtain the four-fold profit growth rate in 2011-2014. However, the revenue and profit in 2011 of the group only increased by 30 percent, much lower than the expectations.

Finally, Anh decided to leave the post quietly after 20 months of taking the office. Insiders commented that the leave was undesirable for Anh, who once stated that he would never resign from the post unless he is asked to leave.

The stock market in 2012 witnessed the leave of many high ranking managers, such as President Nguyen Ho Nam and CEO Nguyen Thanh Hung from Sacombank Securities, or Le Dinh Ngoc and Mac Quang Huy from Thang Long Securities.

The tumbling of the stock market has made the trillions of dong worth of capital lent to investors by the companies turn the big losses.

In fact, the leaves of the businessmen were foreseeable. In many other cases, CEOs and Presidents had to leave unexpectedly when the businesses which they managed were taken over by new shareholders, who, of course, wanted new apparatus of leaders.

These included President of the HCM City Foreign Trade and Investment & Development Company or President of Sacombank, one of the biggest Vietnamese Banks Dang Van Thanh. They both were the founders of their businesses and devoted themselves working there for tens of years.

Commenting about the tendency, Hoang Thach Lan, a well-known economist, who once worked for the HCM City Stock Exchange, said changing managers should be seen as an action of restructuring businesses in the difficult period.

He said shareholders have the right to replace the leadership once the businesses cannot obtain the good business results as they expect. However, the problem is that no one knows for sure how many enterprises changed CEOs just to renovate the management method.

Especially, a lot of very young businessmen have been put into the most very important positions of businesses. These included the new CEO of VNDirect Nguyen Hoang Giang, President of Vinaconex To Linh Huong or President of ACB Tran Hung Huy.

Lan noted that in many cases, changing CEOs to improve the corporate governance was just a screen for the benefits of the groups of interests.

Manh Ha