Over the past three years, divestment activities stoked up the cross-ownership "wipe-out" among Vietnam-based financial institutions in order to strengthen ownership transparency.

Cross ownership in financial institutions soon to hit finish line

In late 2017, Vietcombank, one of the largest state-owned commercial banks in Vietnam, finished its divestment of a 4.3 per cent stake at Saigonbank and 10.91 per cent stake at Cement Finance JSC (CFC). The bank has also put 6.6 million OCB shares on public auction at the price of VND13,000 ($0.57) per share.

Previously, the commercial bank announced the public auction of its 18.9 million OCB shares, also at the starting price of VND13,000 ($0.57).

The bank acquired over VND171 billion so far from the divestment of over 13.16 million shares in the auction. Currently, Vietcombank still possesses an 8.19 per cent stake in Vietnam Export Import Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Eximbank) and 6.97 per cent in Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MB).

Nghiem Xuan Thanh, chairman of the Board of Directors (BOD) at Vietcombank, asserted that, "The bank has been actively boosting divestment activities in order to comply with Circular No.36/2014/TT-NHNN dated November 20, 2014, stipulating the minimum safety limits and ratios for transactions performed by credit institutions and branches of foreign-invested banks."

Thanh further added that, "The bank had planned to shrink its shareholding in MB and Eximbank to the required 5 per cent. In addition, Vietcombank also plans to trade 350 million shares, equivalent to a 10 per cent stake, to foreign investors in 2018."

Le Van Quyet, CEO of Eximbank, stated that the bank managed to downsize its shareholding in Sacombank from over 165.22 million shares to just over 50 million shares in late 2017, securing about VND400 billion ($17.56 million) from the divestiture. Currently, the bank's divestment is still in progress.

VIR