A lot of banks change hands before the Year of the Snake

VietNamNet Bridge – The banking sector has become boisterous with a lot of big shareholders selling their shares in big quantities to quit the business field. Meanwhile, a lot of hidden “big guys” have jumped on the bandwagon.

The merger of Western Bank and PVFC will create a big bank.

Big guys tired of the investments in banks? 

ACB Securities Company (ACBS) has just sold 125 million shares, including 57.8 million Eximbank shares, 33.6 million Dai A Bank, 11 million Techcombank, 5.6 million Vietcombank shares.

A lot of share transfer deals have taken place recently, under which tens of trillions of dong worth of bank shares were traded, which have led to the big changes in the ownership structure of commercial banks.

In fact, the massive share sales were foreseeable, especially when enterprises and commercial banks are undergoing the restructure process.

Enterprises have no other choice than withdrawing capital from some investment projects to get money back to maintain the operation in their core business fields. Especially, securities companies, which are in critical situation, have to “beautify the books” to meet the new requirement set by the State Securities Commission (SSC), or they would be put under the probe by the watchdog agency.

Bank shares seem to get less attractive to investors recently, after a series of banks were found as “having problems” and forced to bear the strict control by the central bank. 

The wife of Dang Thanh Tam, one of the biggest businessmen in Vietnam, has registered the sale of 1.87 million Nam Viet bank shares to withdraw all of her capital from the institution.

Prior to that, the Hanoi Stock Exchange released a notice that Thanh registered the sale of 14.82 million shares, or 4.98 percent of Navibank’s shares.

If the sale succeeds, Thanh would not have any more shares at the bank which has a close relation to her husband – Dang Thanh Tam.

Savico has transferred all the 12.14 million stakes, or 4.05 percent of the chartered capital in OCB to the partner through an affair worth VND133.53 billion (VND11,000 dong per share).

A lot of other institutions and individuals have also withdrawn capital from banks, namely the Vietnam Helicopter Corporation, which registered the dale of 53 million MBB share options, and MTV, which registered the sale of 8.3 million MBB share options.

Tram Trong Ngam, the eldest son of Tram Be, registered the sale of 48 million Sacombank shares (4.93 percent). Meanwhile, Phuong Nam Securities, Saigon Exim have withdrawn capital from Sacombank.

Some satiated, some still itching for bank shares

The movement of the big guys withdrawing capital from banks has been attributed to the current economic difficulties and the predicted bad economic performance in 2013.

SVC said it decided to withdraw from OCB to restructure its investment portfolios. The business performance of SVC in 2012 was not as good as in the years before. The total debts by the third quarter of the enterprise had been three times higher than the stockholder equity. 

If withdrawing capital from OCB, SVC would take back a big sum of cash to implement its important projects. This is also the reason which prompted ACBS, KBC and SGT to withdraw capital from banks recently.

Experts believe that it’s now the right time for powerful finance investors to buy bank shares to set their foot in the backbone business field of the national economy. The banking sector is facing some difficulties now, but in the long term, the sector always show great potentials..

Thien Thanh Group, which plans to own 9.67 percent of stakes of Trustbank, and together with the other 20 individual shareholders, own 74.37 percent of stakes, is an example,

In case of OCB, the hidden face who bought 12 million shares might also think carefully when spending VND130 billion dong on the affair.

US$1=VND21,000

Manh Ha