The office building at No 63 Ly Thai To street

Platinum Victory investment fund last November caught special attention from the public when acquiring 5.5 percent of shares of Vinamilk divested by the State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC) in a deal worth $616.6 million. 

After that, it continued buying Vinamilk shares and increased its ownership ratio in Vietnam’s biggest dairy production company to over 10 percent.

Platinum Victory Pte Ltd is headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is the developer of a series of huge real estate projects in Taman Melati, Danau Kota, Sentul and Jalan Sultan Ismail.

Platinum Victory is 100 percent owned by Jarrdine Cycle & Carriage (JC&C), a Singaporean leading company operating in the automobile distribution sector in South East Asia which has subsidiaries in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Before making investment in Vinamilk, JC&C had been present for nearly 10 years in Vietnam as the strategic shareholder of Thaco, an automobile manufacturer and REE.

JC&C is now holding 25.1 percent of shares in Thaco, and its subsidiary Platinum Victory Pte Lte is holding 23 percent of REE shares.

The investment in ACB is one of the most long lasting deals of JC&C. Connaught Investors, a link of its network, held 7 percent of ACB shares and has transferred the shares to other two companies of the same network.

In early 2017, Siam City Cement, the company where JC&C holds a 25 percent stake,  spent $580 million to buy Holcim Vietnam from LafargeHolcim and renamed it Insee.

All roads lead to… Jardine Matheson

Established in 1899 from a grocery in Kuala Lumpur, the company sold everything from soap and screws to bicycles and cars. In 2011, JC&C was taken over by Jardine Matheson.

The two key corporations of Jardine Matheson are Jardine Matheson Holdings (JMH) và Jardine Strategic Holdings (JSH), both of which hold each other’s shares (82 percent and 55 percent). 

The two office buildings in Hanoi at No 63 Ly Thai To street and at the Hai Ba Trung – Ba Trieu intersection, which lease offices at sky high rents, belong to Hong Kong Land, a subsidiary of Jardine Matheson. 

After a period of silence, Hong Kong Land came back to Vietnam, joining hands with Son Kim Land to develop The Nassim project in HCMC. It is also the partner of CII in the project on developing Thu Thiem new urban area project.

Jardine Matheson has other investments in shopping centers and F&B chains. In the retail sector, it is a big player behind the well-known Crescent Mall in HCMC and the owner of Guardian chain.

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Thanh Mai