OCB currently ranks 17 out of 34 commercial banks in Vietnam in terms of total assets (Photo: ocb.com.vn) Hanoi (VNA) - The VietnamOpportunity Fund (VOF), managed by VinaCapital Group, invested 11 million USD inthe Orient Commercial Bank (OCB), owning nearly 5 percent stake in the bank.
This investment is expected to help OCB diversify its services to targetedcustomer segments, including affluent individual clients and small- andmedium-sized enterprises.
Andy Ho, chief investment officer of VincaCapital and managing director of the VietnamOpportunity Fund, told enternews.vn that this investment was a rareopportunity to own a meaningful stake in a bank that had high lending andearnings growth.
However, the details of the purchase price or the number of shares VOF hasacquired from the deal have not been disclosed.
In August, VOF had also invested in Tasco Joint Stock Company and FPT Digital Retail Joint Stock Company, with 11 million USD beingpoured into each company.
Established in 1996, OCB currently ranks 17 out of 34 commercial banks inVietnam in terms of total assets. The bank has a compound annual growthrate (CAGR) of 23 percent, and expects earnings growth of approximately100 percent and 30 percent in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
The bank expects to list on the HCM Stock Exchange (HOSE) before the end of2019. Late in June, OCB received approval from the central bank to increase itsregistered capital from 4 trillion VND (176 million USD) to nearly 4.2 trillionVND via issuance of bonus shares.
VOF is an investment fund company founded by VinaCapital in 2003 with initialcapital of 10 million USD. Now, this number has increased to more than 20million USD. VOF’s profitability in the years from 2010 until now reached 42percent, contrary to the market loss of 18 percent.
This year, VOF implemented 25 private equity (PE) transactions, with a totalinvestment of 476.3 million USD.
Since the beginning of the year, VinaCapital has divested capital in a numberof real estate companies, in order to restructure investment categories to suitthe new situation.-VNA
VNA
