From the beginning of 2019, especially from March up to now, EIB shares of Vietnam Joint Stock Export Import Bank (Eximbank) witnessed continuous deals with huge volume. Our statistics show that, over the past three months, there have been more than 350 million shares exchanged with value of over 5.6 trillion dong, equivalent to nearly 30 percent of Eximbank’s outstanding shares, in which there have been the trading sessions reaching trillions of dong. The question is, who bought, who sold the above shares?
A familiar source said that the investor group was related to Nguyen Quoc Toan’s family, Chair of Nam A Joint Stock Commercial Bank (Nam A Bank), had been withdrawing capital from Vietnam Joint Stock Export Import Bank (Eximbank). According to this source, the investor group related to the chair of Nam A’s family had invested in Eximbank’s stock since 2014, after acquiring the stake of Tram Beformer vice president of Saigon Thuong Tin Joint Stock Commercial Bank (Sacombank). The holding time had been up to five years.
After acquiring shares from Tram Be, this group had plans to bring people into Eximbank’s Board of directors in the period of 20152016 but failed. Until the shareholder meeting in April 2018, Luong Thi Cam Tu, former general director of Nam A BankWho was supposed to represent the bank group, was elected to be a member of the Board of directors and then on March 22, 2019 was elected as bank president.
However, after Tu became chair with the consensus of seven members of the Board of directors, including two members representing major shareholder of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SBMC) in Japan. Le Minh Quoc, independent member of the Board of directors and the bank’s chair, sued the Board because he believed that the resolution to elect a new president and dismiss him was not lawful. The Court accepted the case and applied a temporary emergency measure on March 27 to suspend the implementation of the Resolution on changing the Chair of the Board.
Immediately after the court made a decision, Eximbank had complained, affirming Quoc’s allegations as unfounded and asked the court to cancel the provisional emergency measure.
While the situation in Eximbank about personnel is still buzzing and has not come to an end, the transactions of EIB shares recorded on the stock market recently attracted attention.
Also according to the source confirmed to us, the related party Nguyen Quoc Toan is conducting divestment and the buying partner is a big investor of famous consumer goods business in Hanoi. Thus, Eximbank will have a “new owner” and it is expected that at the annual shareholders’ meeting on April 26, this group will be announced.
The battle between Eximbank’s internal shareholders has been going on for nearly five years, making the bank’s business activities stagnant. In 2018, profits were a bit broken, but in the end, the loss of money of VIP savings customers caused the bank to pay hundreds of billions of dong (according to the judgment of the appellate court), making the profit accordingly to be adjusted down to halve.
Now with the appearance of a new group of shareholders, if there is no consensus of the group of shareholders, Eximbank will hardly be able to escape the difficulties. Therefore, the urgent requirement is that Eximbank’s major shareholders must agree to support each other to build the bank and bring the highest benefits to thousands of other investors, more than 6,000 employees and to have more sympathetic and attractive look in the eyes of foreign investors. Thus, Eximbank can hope to return to the “race” soon, although the fellow banks in the previous period such as Vietnam Prosperity Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VPBank), Vietnam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Techcombank) and Asia Joint Stock Commercial Bank (ACB) have now accelerated and kept the “endless” distance with Eximbank.
As for Nam A Bank, the incident related to Eximbank has been mentioned many times in 2015 when two high-ranking leaders of this bank planned to join Eximbank, then withdraw. Operation has been stable since then, with 2018 business results recording a record high profit of over 730 billion dong.
If the divestment is completed, this group of shareholders will not only have a profit of up to 30 percent (at the time of 2014, the price of EIB shares was only around 13,000 dong, but at present it is more than 17,000 dong). This year the bank aims to sell capital to foreign investors and list stocks on Hochiminh Stock Exchange (HOSE).
