VietNamNet Bridge – They are the Vietnamese people who have set themselves up in business, settled overseas and become millionaires.

Tran Dinh Truong – the billionaires in New York

Tran Dinh Truong (1932 – 2012) was considered the richest Vietnamese person in the world with the asset value of 1.2 billion dollars.

He started his business of hotel management with Opera and Carter Hotels near the Times Square, and Lafayette Hotel in Buffalo in New York.

Nowadays, Tran Group Management LLC of his family is managing and leasing the system of hotels in the northeastern region in the US, including Quality Inn Downtown, Best Western (Baltimore), Lafayette Buffalo NY. It is building Crown Hotel with 250 rooms in Baltimore, and moving ahead with the plan to build a 200 room on Market Road in Philadelphia.

The group is also considering making investment in Vietnam, while it is managing VBC, a Vietnam Business Center in Baltimore, which aims to encourage and help Vietnamese enterprises establish their presence in the US and bring Vietnamese goods to the US market.

Trung Dung, the legendary technology billionaire in the US


Dr Trung Dung, born in 1967, is a Vietnamese American billionaire who possesses the total asset worth one billion dollars.

When setting foot on the US land in 1985, Trung Dung only had two dollars on his pocket. But 15 years later, he earned 1.8 billion dollars from the sale of his OnDisplay Company to Vignette Corp.

The story about Dung has become famous among the high technology community which has been mentioned in a lot of well-known journals, namely Forbes, Fortune, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. Dung’s story was also reported in the book titled The American Dream by the CBS editor Dan Rather.

Dung got the bachelor degree in computing science and applied mathematics from the Massachusetts University in Boston in 1988. After that, he got his master degree. In 1992, he got the doctorate from the Boston University

Dung set up On Display Inc in 1996, the company which is considered one of the 10 most successful companies in their IPOs in the US in 1999.

Since 2005, he has been working as the managing director of V-Home Group, which gathers the Vietnamese American businessmen who want to seek investment opportunities in Vietnam.

Nguyen Van Hien, the richest Vietnamese person in Germany

Hien now possesses a huge fortune in Germany, including the Dong Xuan Shopping Mall in Berlin. The shopping mall is the place where Vietnamese businessmen do business and introduce their products.

Hien said a lot of investors have sent words on buying the shopping mall, but Hien has refused to sell it.

He is investing some 30 million euros to build up a cultural, economic center in Lichtenberg in Berlin, which aims to introduce Vietnamese cuisine, culture and Vietnamese people to German people.

Darunee – the most successful businessman in Thailand

After finishing the accountancy faculty of the Chulalongkorn University, one of the most prestigious universities in Thailand, she got married with a Chinese Thai man. Both of them then started their business with the modest capital of tens of thousands of baht they saved before.

At first, they served as the sales agent of refrigeration products for the US York in Bangkok. After seven years, they could set up a private owned company, Senator, a refrigeration machine manufacturer, when Darunee turned 30.

Senator has become a well-known brand in Thailand which brings the revenue of 500 million baht a year.

She said that in the war period, Vietnamese people in Thailand did not introduce themselves as Vietnamese. However, she was always a brave Vietnamese, because she always said she was from Vietnam and she was proud she is a Vietnamese.

Van Anh