VietNamNet Bridge – Most seasoned Vietnamese businesspeople were born in the 1960s and are aged between 46 and 55.

The majority of the CEOs of VNR500 enterprises are experienced in their fields with 41.5 percent of CEOs between 46 and 55, and 31.7 percent of CEOs over 56.

Meanwhile, young CEOs, i.e., those who were born in the 1980s and later, account for only 0.8 percent.

The VNR500 is a listing of the country’s largest businesses compiled by Vietnam Report, modeled after similar listings created by Fortune magazine.

The VNR500 list is determined by several factors: revenue, industry, profit, growth rates, labour and owner equity and total assets.

In the 2014 listing, many famous CEOs were born in 1958, 1959 and 1960, or the years of the Dog, Pig and Rat.

However, the CEOs are about to retire, and need to think of finding replacements to take over their role.

The CEOs born in the 1950s and 1960s are believed to have good business experience. Meanwhile, the biggest advantage of the young CEOs born in 1980s is good education. They have the opportunities to follow higher education and access information sources thanks to the development of information technology. Young businessmen can do business internationally without any language barriers.

According to Vietnam Report, the number of CEOs aged below 40 accounts for 8.6 percent, and the majority of them were born in the Year of Horse (1978), Cat (1975) and Dragon (1976).

Vietnamese believe that those who were born in the year of the Horse are dynamic and good at doing business.

There is no businesspeople born in the years of Buffalo, Tiger, Monkey and Rooster. They are still too young to become CEOs and they now still have to work hard to earn experience and assets to develop their business in the future.

Most of the young successful businesspeople (68 percent) are from private enterprises. This, according to an analyst, is understandable. While leaders of state-owned enterprises can become CEOs when they get older because of strict personnel regulations, those who run private enterprises can jump to the high posts, even if they are younger, provided they can prove their abilities.

Privately run enterprises, most of which are small- and medium-sized, make up VND53.1 trillion of the VNR500 enterprises’ total revenue.

A recent survey by the International Labor Organization (ILO) showed that 23 percent of Vietnamese businesses’ CEOs are women.

Vietnam ranks 76th out of the 108 surveyed countries in the number of female CEOs.

Mot The Gioi