Business in brief 19/6
* Bao Viet Holdings (BVH), which is 10% owned by HSBC, said Friday that it will list 573,026,605 shares on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange on Thursday. The company, which has a registered capital of VND5.73 trillion ($337 million), will become the biggest issue on the bourse, it said. The company didn’t announce its debut price. Bao Viet made pretax profit of VND314.19 billion on revenue of VND2.46 trillion in the first quarter this year, the company said. It targets pretax profit of VND775.20 billion on revenue of VND9.72 trillion this year.
* Foreign investors were net sellers of VND116 billion ($6.8 million) of Vietnamese stocks Thursday out of a total VND1.98 trillion traded, the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange said. Volume traded totaled 55.9 million shares, with foreigners accounting for 8.7% of that volume, the stock market operator said. In the month to date, foreign investors have been net sellers of VND599.4 billion of Vietnamese stocks
* Cavico Energy Construction JSC, a wholly own subsidiary of Cavico Corp, won the contract bid involving construction of an overfill spillway (Package 4) for Da Ban Irrigation Dam. The minister of the Vietnam Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development signed the winning bid for Cavico Energy valued at approximately $2.5 million. As part of the contract, Cavico Energy will be responsible for excavating and removing 160,000 cubic meters (m3) of common earth and rock for dam foundation and constructing 9,000 cubic meters (m3) of concrete walls and water slopes. Cavico Energy is required to complete the contract within 27 months. Supported by the ODA funds, the 162-square-kilometer Da Ban Irrigation Dam was constructed in the 1980s and is located in the Ninh Hoa district, north of Khanh Hoa province.
* The State Bank of Vietnam said Thursday it has allowed South Bank to raise its capital to VND2.3 trillion ($135 million) from VND2 trillion. The central bank didn’t provide a timetable for the capital raising.
* Vietnam created 650,000 jobs in the first six months of the year, 17% fewer than in the first half of last year, a state-run newspaper reported on Friday. The country is facing “a wide range of challenges in generating employment while the number of workers losing jobs has increased sharply”, Thanh Nien Daily said, quoting Deputy Minister of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs Dam Huu Dac. The ministry has said it expects unemployment to rise by 300,000 people this year, and 10,000 Vietnamese working abroad are likely to return home. The ministry reported to parliament last week that it expected 1.45 million jobs to be created this year if economic growth reached the government’s target of 5%. The initial target had been 1.7 millio
* French pay-TV group Canal Plus expects its new package of channels to attract over 1 million subscribers in Vietnam by 2012. This first foray by Canal Plus outside of Europe and Africa is the result of negotiations which started in 2003. The Vivendi unit’s operations in Vietnam will be owned jointly with state-run television network VTV. The firm, which is now pursuing several overseas regions due to slower subscriptions in France, expects to launch the new channels in Vietnam buy the end of the year. Canal Plus Groupe will hold 49% of the joint satellite TV venture – versus 51% for VCTV, a unit of VTV – but operations will be run by the Canal Overseas unit. Meheut estimated that Canal Plus had invested around US$50 million in such expansions, with the goal of breaking even after two years of operations.
* Mercer College has officially entered the Vietnamese market under a partnership contract with a local company signed in Ho Chi Minh City on June 12. Mercer College is a brand of US-based Mercer specializing in human resource (HR) training and development. Mercer College and TalentNet, one of Vietnam’s leading providers of HR solutions, will design and provide training courses for Vietnamese HR experts in order to meet the country’s increasing demand for qualified personnel. According to TalentNet General Director Tieu Yen Trinh, trainees can acquire a strategic HR knowledge to better serve their companies’ business objectives and sustainable development orientations. Dan Mitchell, Mercer College Regional Chief in ASEAN, affirmed that Mercer College’s presence in Vietnam shows its keen interest in promoting the country’s economic development.
