Vietnam's HDBank to absorb PGBank in merger

Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City Development Joint Stock Bank, better known as HDBank, said its shareholders approved on Saturday a plan to merge with the unlisted Petrolimex Group Commercial Joint Stock Bank as it seeks to expand operations in the country.

The merger is scheduled to take place by August this year, the bank said in a statement.

Each share of Petrolimex Group Commercial Joint Stock Bank, or PGBank, will be converted into 0.621 HDBank share, it said, adding that HDBank will issue 300 million new shares for the conversion.

The merger will enable HDBank to expand its client base, including with Vietnam National Petroleum Group, which holds a 40 percent stake in PGBank and a share of around 50 percent of Vietnam’s retail-transport fuel market.

The shareholders also approved a pretax profit target of VND3.92 trillion ($172.15 million) for this year, a 62.2 percent increase from last year.

HDBank, a retail bank whose vice chairwoman is Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, the billionaire founder and chairwoman of Vietjet Aviation, is targeting to grow total assets to VND242.87 trillion by the end of this year, up 28.3 percent from end-2017.

HDBank, which listed its shares on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange in January following a $300 million IPO in November, reported pretax profit of 1.045 trillion dong in the first quarter this year, up 170 percent from a year earlier. ($1 = 22,771 dong)