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'As soon as EVN offered the sale of 81.5 million ABBank shares, six investors would buy 40 million shares at VND10,000 per share, equal to the face value.

As such, EVN still needs to sell the remaining 41.5 million bank shares to fulfill the divestment as per the request by the government.

The Debt & Asset Trading Company (DATC), governed by MOF, has announced the auction of 26,660 OCB shares at the starting price of 4,900 per share and 24,662 million SCB shares at VND4,100 per share.

Some months ago, SJC, a gold, silver and gemstone company, successfully divested 25 million Eximbank shares, or 2 percent of the bank’s chartered capital. The shares were only sold after four auctions.

Capital withdrawal stuck

According to MOF, the PetroVietnam’s capital withdrawal from PVcomBank is ‘on the run’. However, no information about PVcomBank share auctions has been released.

Petrolimex, the petroleum importer and distributor, which holds 120 million PG Bank shares, or 40 percent of the bank’s stake, has been told to cut down the ownership ratio to 20 percent. However, the process has not kicked off yet because PG Bank is still awaiting the State Bank’s final decision on merging with VietinBank.

In case PG Bank is allowed to merge with VietinBank, Petrolimex’s ownership ratio in PG Bank will decrease sharply, and Petrolimex will automatically be a VietinBank’s shareholder. If so, the divestment can be done more easily because VietinBank shares are ‘blue chip’.

Banks also want to sell bank shares

VPBank is consulting with its shareholders on the plan to sell shares to foreign strategic investors and sell parts of its capital contribution to VPBank Finance and VPBank Securities, two of its subsidiaries.

VPBank once had a foreign strategic investor – OCBC. However, since the Singaporean banker disinvested in 2013, VP Bank has no more foreign strategic shareholder. 

Nghiem Xuan Thanh, president of Vietcombank, one of the Vietnamese largest commercial banks, has recently proposed the government to set up a roadmap to reduce the state ownership ratio in state-owned banks to 51 percent.

At present, the state still holds 95.2 percent of stake in BIDV, 77.1 percent in Vietcombank and 64.4 percent in VietinBank.

The government has been urged to reduce the state’s ownership ratio in Vietcombank by 10 percent. 

Vietcombank shares are traded at VND45,600 per share, and if the government sells 10 percent of Vietcombank stake, it would be able to get VND11.856 trillion.

NLD