BIDV charter capital Vietnam’s highest following stake sale

By Dat Nguyen November 2, 2019 | 09:40 pm PT

A sign of BIDV in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by Shutterstock/Slyellow.

State-owned BIDV has become the largest bank by charter capital in Vietnam after selling a 15 percent stake to South Korea's KEB Hana Bank.

Its charter capital has increased by VND6 trillion ($259 million) to VND40 trillion ($1.73 billion) after the stake sale to KEB Hana Bank, it said in a statement Saturday.

The Vietnamese bank, listed in the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange, raised VND20.2 trillion ($872 million) from the deal by selling 603 million shares for VND33,640 ($1.45), 17 percent below the closing price on Friday.

KEB Hana Bank became the largest foreign owner in BIDV after the deal, second only to the state, which saw its ownership decline to 81 percent.

KEB Hana Bank is a subsidiary of South Korea’s Hana Financial Group, one of Asia’s largest with operations in 24 countries.

The deal ends BIDV’s years of unsuccessful attempts to increase its capital. The other major state-owned banks are Vietcombank, Vietinbank and Agribank. The former two have charter capital of VND37 trillion ($1.6 billion) while the latter has VND30.5 trillion ($1.3 billion).

In the first nine months this year BIDV's net profit fell by 3 percent year-on-year to VND5.6 trillion ($241.7 million). It had total assets as of September 30 of VND1,420 trillion ($61.28 billion), the highest of any Vietnamese bank.