VietNamNet Bridge – Many banks have brought forward merger plans at their annual shareholders’ meetings, including several obvious deals to be carried out soon.

VietNamNet Bridge – After a year of economic restructuring, Viet Nam still faces grave problems including high inventory, bad debt and falling purchasing power.

 VietNamNet Bridge – Policies should be made more liberal for foreign investors to get involved in debt trading, and thus bad debt settlement can be accelerated,

The Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam has decided to delay the implementation of the Circular No. 02 guiding the provisioning against the risks in credit activities.

The reports from 10 State Bank’s local branches showed that Hanoi, HCM City and Da Nang are the localities with the highest bad debt ratios.

A lot of banks would try to conceal their bad debt situation and would not sell the bad debts to the VAMC, a company to be set up by the State to help banks escape from unrecovered debts.

Finance leasing companies have been operating in a risky legal framework where they can easily lose capital because of bad debs and incur losses.

Vietnam’s economic outlook is not so bright since fundamental shortcomings have not been remedied and economic restructuring has not yet kicked off, said the Economic Committee of the National Assembly..

In order to become stronger, banks need to be bigger, or they need to increase their capital.

VietNamNet Bridge – The bad debt ratio of the banking system may fall to 4-5% under Vietnam’s accounting standards by the end of this year, said Le Xuan Nghia, former vice chairman of the National Financial Supervisory Commission.

The State Bank of Vietnam has reported that the bad debt ratio has decreased sharply by 2.82 percent to six percent. However, analysts have looked dubiously at the figure

A lot of the well-known names, who were considered the big sharks in the business circle, have become miserable with the big debts on their shoulders.

VietNamNet Bridge – The changes in the criteria and the method for bad debt classification will surely make the bad debt ratio increase sharply.

Commercial banks have reported unsatisfactory business results for 2012 with profits down dramatically. However, the unsatisfactory business performance of the banking system turns out to be the “good news.”

TrustBank has “opened fire,” kicking start a new merger and acquisition (M&A) wave in 2013. What are the next?

Figures released by the State Bank have shown that at the end of 2012, the total assets of the entire domestic banking system recorded a growth of 2.54 per cent compared with 2011,

 VietNamNet Bridge – Despite challenges ahead, experts in the banking and securities industry expect the stock market to see a gradual recovery given an expected improvement in economic conditions this year.

 VietNamNet Bridge – The troubled property market, together with the struggling financial market, should be restructured rather than rescued in the nation’s economic restructuring process,

Whether Vietnam can settle bad debts or not will decide how the Vietnam’s national economy performs in 2013. Meanwhile, it’s still unclear where the money to settle the bad debts comes from.

VietNamNet Bridge – The banking sector, which is always considered the most lucrative business field, has experienced a very bad year 2012.