Vietnam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Techcombank) plans to sell more than 158 treasury shares to foreign investors.

At the bank’s Annual General Meeting of shareholders on Saturday, Chairman Ho Hung Anh said the price of the shares must be at a minimum of VND23,445 (US$1.03), the price at which the bank had bought back the shares from HSBC last year.

Anh said Techcombank would prioritise investors from the United States and Europe for the sale.

The bank will also sell 14 million preferred shares from the treasury stock, equal to 1.5 per cent of the bank’s charter capital, to its employees in the second quarter of the year.

The proceeds from the treasury share sale will be used to increase the bank’s assets, expand its network and credit operations and for investments in Government bonds.

Anh said Techcombank would also list its shares on HCM Stock Exchange (HoSE) this year, adding that the bank had planned to list its shares on HoSE last year but felt the timing was not right.

Explaining about the sale of its consumer finance firm TechcomFinance in mid-January this year, Anh said Techcombank had not selected the high-risk business model to not pursue the operation.

Techcombank plans a profit of VND10 trillion this year. This appears to be a tough target given that only Vietcombank in the entire banking system had met its target last year.

To meet the target, Techcombank has set a 17 per cent total assets increase, a 40 per cent rise in capital mobilisation and an 18 per cent credit growth this year, while keeping bad debts to below 2 per cent.

Last year, the bank had posted a pre-tax profit of nearly VND8.04 trillion. It took the fifth position in terms of highest profit in the banking sector. — VNS