(DTCK) Vietnam Export Import Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Eximbank)’s Board of directors had just issued a resolution on dismissing the title of vice Chair of the Board of directors for Dang Anh Mai right before the second annual shareholder meeting on July 29.
Dang Anh Mai was one of the two vice Presidents of the Board of directors of Eximbank, having joined the Board of directors of Eximbank since 2013 and being elected by the members to be the vice Chair of the Bank in June 2017.
It was worth mentioning that Eximbank’s decision on immunity to Dang Anh Mai issued less than a week before the second general Meeting of Shareholders in 2020 was scheduled to be held on July 29, 2020. Eximbank was considered as a bank that always changed its senior personnel right before the shareholders’ meeting.
About one month ago, on the eve of the first general Meeting of Shareholders, Eximbank’s Board of directors also decided to dismiss the Chair of the Board of directors from Cao Xuan Ninh according to personal wishes, to elect Yasuhiro Saitoh to take the Chair of the Board of directors.
The fact that Yasuhiro Saitoh was chair of Eximbank reminded many people that Saitoh as the representative of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), a Japanese strategic shareholder holding 15 percent of the capital in the bank. SMBC also nominated Yasuhiro Saitoh to join Eximbank’s Board of directors in 2015.
This showed, the large groups of shareholders of Eximbank had not found a common voice, so they did not want to bring up controversy in the meeting as before. Therefore, the congress had not been successfully conducted and lasted from Q2/2019 until then, Eximbank had repeatedly postponed the meeting.
Although the bank always affirmed that the appointment of senior leadership positions was in accordance with the charter and complies with the provisions of law. However, it could be seen in three times of announcing the attractive position of the recent Chair of the Board of directors, Eximbank had all problems, including right fuss, dispute.
Eximbank’s Board of Supervisors had recommended that the operation of the bank’s Board of directors was lack of rhythm. Regarding the activities of the Board of directors, Eximbank’s Supervisory Board assessed that in the last term, especially in 2019, the members still had mixed and controversial opinions.
The meetings were often long, could not come to the final decision, leading to slow decision-making on important issues of the bank, typically the appointment of general director, representative Eximbank’s laws, organisation of shareholders’ meetings, requests from supervisory inspection agencies had led to Eximbank being administratively sanctioned on this issue and affecting the bank’s image.
The Board of Supervisors said that this was also a profound lesson for the Board of directors to learn from experience to avoid repeating in the next term.
Regarding shareholder structure, the current major shareholder at Eximbank included SMBC (owned 15%); Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) owning less than 5%; Nam A Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Nam A Bank); Hyundai; and Ngo Thu Thuy’s group.
However, in a written request to Eximbank (April 28, 2020) requesting the Bank to convene an extraordinary shareholder meeting, SMBC mentioned two issues to discuss. Thoes were the request to dismiss Yasuhiro Saitoh and the offer to reduce the number of members voting of confidence for the Board of directors.
Earlier, in May 2019, SMBC also had a notice sent to Eximbank affirming that, from May 18, 2019, Yasuhiro Saitoh was not an officer, employee, authorised person or representative of SMBC as a member of the Board of directors or another position at Eximbank.
However, the issue of disagreement in high-level personnel taking place during the five-year term up to then had not ended. Eximbank’s Board of directors members currently had nine people but had not found a common voice during the past time.
One of the important contents in the general Assembly held in 2020 was to elect members for the Board of directors for the new term of 2020 2025 with the proposal to increase by two members to 11 members, including two exclusive members.
Despite replacing the new Chair of the Board of directors before the meeting when Yasuhiro Saitoh took in, both of the bank’s extraordinary and annual shareholders’ meetings on June 30 were unsuccessful, due to insufficient rates to proceed.
Specifically, in Eximbank’s annual shareholders meeting 2020 in the morning of June 30th, the percentage of shareholders attending was only 17.54%, so it was not enough to proceed. In the afternoon of June 30, Eximbank conducted an extraordinary shareholder meeting, but until 2:30, the percentage of attending shareholders was only 51.92%, not as much as 65 percent as required, so it was canceled.
