Forbes has released the 2024 list of billionaires, with six well-known Vietnamese names, including Vingroup president and VinFast CEO Pham Nhat Vuong, four other male billionaires, and the president of Vietjet Air, Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao.

Thao’s assets value have increased by $600 million to $2.8 billion, the second largest increase next to Hoa Phat president Tran Dinh Long, and six times more than Vuong’s asset increase.

The prosperity of the tourism and aviation sector and the positive signs in the real estate market have helped Thao stand as the wealthiest businesswomen in the Vietnamese stock market and the third richest Southeast Asian businesswoman.

In Southeast Asia, Thao is below Dewi Kam, who has assets of $4.5 billion (Indonesia) and Somurai Jaruphnit ($3.1 billion, Thailand).

The former's asset value increased sharply thanks to shares she is holding at the mining company Bayan Resources, while the latter is holding 8.4 percent of shares of Charoen Pokphand (CP), one of the largest animal feed and livestock production groups in the world.

Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, in the report released on April 2, showed that she has $2.8 billion.

Meanwhile, Dewi Kam has $4.3 billion in real-time report (down $200 million compared with the 2024 newly released list) and ranks 742nd in the world, while Somurai Jaruphnit has $3 billion, ranked 1,124th.

In early March 2023, Forbes temporarily stopped updating information about Thao’s assets for one week.

In early 2022, Thao’s Vietjet reported a loss for the first time of VND2 trillion, though its revenue soared thanks to the sharp increase in number of passengers after the Covid-19 pandemic.

In mid-March 2023, Forbes once again updated Thao’s assets. Replying to VietNamNet at that time, Nguyen Lan Anh, representing Forbes in Asia, said errors occurred on the page directly updating Thao’s assets.

Tourism, aviation revovery

Sovico Group owned by Thao and her family members, is a multi-field private economic group with investments in finance and banking (HDBank and HD Saison), aviation (Vietjet Air) real estate (Phu Long), resorts, and energy.

Vietjet Air (VJC) in early April made public its 2023 audited financial report which showed strong growth of international air routes and good profits from air transport.

VJC reported a post-tax profit of VND231 billion in 2023, an encouraging result if noting that it took a loss of VND2.262 trillion in 2023. The accumulated revenue reached VND58.3 trillion, up 45 percent over 2022.

Vietjet continues to develop its domestic air route network and gathers strength to expand its international network. It has opened 33 new domestic and international air routes, raising the total number of air routes to 125, including 80 international and 45 national ones.

As for HDBank, where Thao holds the post of vice president, business performance is also good with pre-tax profit of VND13 trillion in 2023, up 27 percent. Its bad debt ratio was relatively low compared with other commercial banks, just 1.5 percent.

Meanwhile, Sovico Group made a profit of VND1.485 trillion last year and its total assets reached VND187 trillion. Sovico’s assets have been increasing since late 2022 after consolidating business, finance, insurance and urban area development activities.

Thao’s VJC benefited as the tourism and aviation industries recovered well in 2023, which increased both passenger and cargo transport output. The geopolitical tensions in some areas in the world led to a rapid increase in demand for air cargo transport.

The airfare increase has also helped air carriers’ revenue. This may occur again, especially in the high summer season. 

Bamboo Airways, another private airline, has recently undergone a restructuring during which the fleet was reduced. Pacific Airlines has returned all aircraft back to settle its debts.

Meanwhile, the engine manufacturer Pratt&Whitney has recalled engines for deep examination and repair, leaving Vietnam Airlines and Vietjet Air without 40 A321 NEO planes.

Manh Ha