Foreign ownership regulation hinders Vietnam banks from finding strategic shareholders

HANOI (Vietnam News/Asia News Network): Many banks expect the participation of foreign strategic shareholders will help them increase capital and improve governance capacity and competitiveness, but the current regulations on foreign ownership ratio are making it difficult, according to experts.

Under the current regulations on foreign investors buying shares of Vietnamese banks, the total share ownership rate of foreign investors must not exceed 30 per cent of the charter capital of a bank.