After years of delays, multiple commercial banks are now racing against time to carry out their listing plans, according to a Dau tu Chung khoan news report.
OCB will trade its shares on the Hochiminh Stock Exchange (HOSE) in quarter three or four, meaning it will skip listing on the market for unlisted public companies (UPCoM) as earlier planned. This plan won approval of shareholders at a meeting on March 28, OCB chair Trinh Van Tuan is quoted by the local news website as saying.
As market conditions have improved this year, Tuan said, the listing will benefit shareholders, investors and OCB. “Therefore, OCB has decided to execute the plan one year earlier than planned,” he said.
VIB, whose shares are currently being traded on UPCoM, is also planning to move to HOSE this year, according to VIB chair Dang Khac Vy. Listing on the HCM City bourse will make the bank more transparent to investors and help improve the value of VIB shares.
TPBank will become the second bank after HDBank to get listed this year. It will issue 555 million shares on HOSE on April 19 at a starting price of VND32,000 per share.
Techcombank’s shareholders have also approved a plan for the bank to list on HOSE this year.
Having traded its shares on UPCoM since last October, LienVietPostBank is working on a plan to move to the bourse in HCM City by 2020.
According to market watchers, those banks accelerating their listing plans on HOSE want to ride on the current positive momentum of the stock market. The VN Index rises have propped up bank shares.
An executive of a bank which is going to list said bad debt is not as high as before thanks to new policy on settlement of bad debt. Overall, banks have been performing well in the past one year, fuelling bank share prices, he added.
The macro economy has been more stable, credit has improved and the stock market has fared better, thus creating a good opportunity for banks to attract capital from investors, particularly those from abroad.
In fact, foreign investors have spent hundreds of millions of US dollars buying shares of banks in the country in recent times. For instance, HDBank sold 21.5 percent of its shares to 76 foreign investors late last year at a total value of over $300 million. Meanwhile, two separate legal entities managed by Warburg Pincus, a leading global private equity firm, will invest over $370 million into Techcombank.
According to OCB, it will sell shares to foreign partners before listing late this year. Foreign shareholder BNP Paribas early this year offloaded its entire stake of 18.68 percent in OCB.
Foreign investors currently hold 4.98 percent of OCB’s chartered capital, which means there remains big room for foreign investors to buy into OCB. Tuan of OCB said the bank is holding talks with potential strategic investors.
http://english.thesaigontimes.vn/59277/Banks-speed-up-listing-plans.html
