Jun 19, 2009, 9:08 GMT
Hanoi - Vietcombank, the largest commercial bank in Vietnam, will list on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HOSE) at the end of this month, a bank official said Friday.
Bank official Nguyen Van Phuong said HOSE had approved a Vietcombank offering of 112,285,000 shares on June 30.
The bank will be the first state-owned bank in Vietnam to have its shares trade on the official exchange, rather than over-the-counter (OTC).
The move will make it much easier for foreign investors to purchase the company's stock, said Luu Tuong Bach, CEO of Hanoi-based Song Ngan Investment. Foreigners' purchases of OTC stock are tightly regulated in Vietnam.
The offering will amount to 9.28 per cent of the company's total shares, Phuong said.
He said Vietcombank would announce the price per share of the offering on June 25.
Vietcombank sold 97.5 million OTC shares in its initial public offering in December, 2007 at an average price of 6.68 dollars per share.
Share prices had fallen to 3.40 dollars per share as of June 16. The Vietnamese market fell sharply from 2007 to early 2009, with the VnIndex dropping from over 1,100 to under 250.
Hanoi-based Vietcombank, established in 1963, is the oldest commercial bank for foreign trade in Vietnam. It reported profits of over 118 million dollars in the first five months of this year. It plans to increase its registered capital by 66 million dollars, to 780 million dollars, within the year.
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