In late 2017, the SCIC (State Capital Investment Corporation) deal of selling 53.59 percent of shares in Sabeco stirred up the public. The buyer was Vietnam Beverage, which spent VND110 trillion, or $5 billion, to acquire 343 million shares.

The price of VND320,000 per share, which was relatively high at that moment, was a surprise to investors. However, they were even more surprised when hearing that Vietnam Beverage, the new owner of Sabeco, was just a small enterprise.

Vietnam Beverage Co Ltd was established just some months before the share auction took place (October 2017) with charter capital of VND100 billion. The owner of Vietnam Beverage was Nga Son Investment JSC.  Nga Son was established on September 27, 2017, or just several days before Vietnam Beverage.

On December 7, Vietnam Beverage raised its charter capital to VND681.6 billion. On the same day, it was transferred to F&B Alliance Vietnam. The biggest shareholder of F&B Alliance Vietnam holding 49 percent of shares was Beerco Ltd, a subsidiary 100 percent invested by Thai Beverage.

Thai Beverage is a Thai conglomerate owned by Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi.

Most recently, the auction of Vinaconex shares (VCG) organized by SCIC on November 22, once again caused a surprise to investors. 

Nguyen Xuan Hung, the owner of An Quy Hung Co Ltd, acquired 254.9 million VCG, or 57.7 percent of Vinaconex’s charter capital.

An Quy Hung accepted to pay VND28,900 per share, much higher than the starting price of VND21,300 and the market price of VND18,500 per share. The total amount of money An Quy Hung had to pay was VND7.36 trillion, or VND2.6 trillion higher than the market price.

An Quy Hung was an unknown name in the market. It had charter capital of VND360 billion as of early November and then VND500 billion as of mid-November, when it applied to register for the VCG auction.

By the end of 2017, An Quy Hung had VND550 billion in short-term assets and VND450 billion in long-term assets, and capital of VND1 trillion. It reported revenue of VND956 billion and VND62.4 billion in post-tax profit.

With such a modest financial capability, this was a ‘small fish swallowing a big fish’ deal, in which a small investor became a big shareholder of a large corporation leading in its business field.

US$1=VND22,000

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