Chair of Hung Vuong Seafood Duong Ngoc Minh

Chair of Hung Vuong Seafood, Duong Ngoc Minh, has stated that he will manage the company for two more years before he resigns from his post in 2021.

Minh, dubbed ‘Catfish King’, is famous for his strong and decisive moves which helped the company in its difficult period.

Once a big player, Hung Vuong spent big money to swallow other companies in the same industry in a plan to build a closed production chain. However, it went downhill when the catfish industry fell into crisis.

In the 2015-2016 fiscal year, Hung Vuong, which earned hundreds of billion of dong in profit each year, unexpectedly reported a loss of VND50 billion. The loss surged to VND713 billion in 2016-2017.

To overcome the difficulties, Minh sold assets, from land to subsidiaries, withdrew capital from non-core business fields, gathered strength on catfish exports, and asked banks to extend debt payment deadlines.

In late 2018, the firm’s financial report showed the company began making profit again and the debts had dropped from VND12 trillion to VND3.1 trillion.

Minh said at the 2019 shareholders’ meeting that the company would be back to the No 1 position, predicting that Hung Vuong would regain the peak revenue of VND20 trillion by 2020. 

Prior to that, Le Phuoc Vu, chair of Hoa Sen Group, told the press that he was leading a quiet life on mountain, purifying himself, and the time he was spending on business was getting shorter. He said the company was being managed by a reliable staff.

Hoa Sen is a big player in steel manufacturing. Its golden days were in 2015-2016 when its revenue and profit, and share prices soared.

Later, as the world steel market fluctuated, Hoa Sen’s speculation, the strategy which brought fat profits, no longer helped. 

Vu had not been seen by the public until the 2019 shareholders’ meeting, though Hoa Sen had been facing difficulties.

He said that the current management board is good and powerful enough to deal with problems. He comes to the office twice a month and stays there for two hours each time. 

Nguyen Duc Tai, the tycoon of The Gioi Di Dong (Mobile World) which dominates the mobile phone distribution market, earlier this year said he was thinking of transferring power to successors, and that his time was over.

Under Tai’s reign, The Gioi Di Dong expanded operations. The company reported a growth rate of over 30 percent in 2018 compared with 2017.

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