Vietcombank received a long-awaited approval from the State Bank of Vietnam last week to increase its charter capital from 12.1 trillion VND (636.84 million USD) to 13.2 trillion VND (694.73 million USD).

“Getting this permission is great,” Vietcombank executive board member Le Thi Hoa told the Engligh-language daily Vietnam News, noting the raft of troubles the bank had faced since its equitisation in 2007, including a failure to obtain a foreign strategic partner and falling stock prices.

“Vietcombank is waiting for directions from the State Bank’s Hanoi branch, and we will then start working with the State Securities Committee,” Hoa said. “We have already sent a prospectus and relevant documents to the commission, but it is waiting on our audited 2009 financial statement.”

Vietcombank expects to issue its finalised statements, audited by KPMG, within the next few days, she said.

Vietcombank was the first State-owned bank to equitise, making its initial public offering on December 26, 2007. At that time, Vietcombank sold 97.5 million shares at an average price of 107,860 VND (6.7 USD) per share. The shares sold in the IPO represented only 6.5 percent of the equity in the bank.

The bank has spent the past two years searching for a foreign strategic investor, after which it would list shares on the stock exchange.

“We really wanted to target several outstanding financial institutions, not funds, although these banks often express their interest in Vietcombank only to then say they lacked the capital to make such a deal,” Hoa said.

Vietinbank followed Vietcombank to equitise in 2008 but has already inked deals with two foreign strategic investors.

Vietcombank earned 5.15 trillion VND (271.10 million USD) in 2009, up 46.2 percent from the previous year, and posted a combined profit of 5.5 trillion VND (289.47 million USD). Credit grew by 25.9 percent during the year.

As of December 31, 2009, the bank had bad debts of 2.54 percent of its total outstanding loans, while deposits totalled 255.9 trillion VND (13.46 million USD), up 16.4 percent from 2008.

In order to increase earnings this year, Vietcombank is considering additional capital expenditures of 500 billion VND (26.31 million USD) to promote new sources of credit and 323 billion VND (17 million USD) to enhance infrastructure and human resources./.