Vietnam Prosperity Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VPBank) has announced a temporary foreign ownership limit at 22.532 per cent of charter capital to prepare for a private placement.

After completing the private placement, the bank will work with the Vietnam Securities Depository Centre to raise the ratio to a 30 per cent cap.

VPBank hasn’t yet released details about the private placement.

The foreign holding ratio at VPBank has fallen from 22.784 per cent to 22.532 per cent after the bank issued shares for its staff under the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) last month. At the ESOP, the bank’s foreign employees received more than 1.3 million shares.

During the annual general meeting of shareholders (AGM) in March, VPBank chairman Ngo Chi Dung announced the bank was looking to raise capital through a private placement in the upcoming months, then lift its foreign ownership limit to 30 per cent and invite potential foreign investors to pay a premium for its stakes.

The total shares on offer for both local and foreign investors would be a maximum of 15 per cent of the common stocks on record at the time of the private placement, Dung said. VPBank’s common stocks currently are nearly 2.53 billion shares, so the total shares to be offered at the private placement will be some 379 million.

Dung noted at the AGM that the possibility for the stocks to find foreign investors was high.

According to Dung, upon the successful completion of the private placement, not only will the bank’s capital adequacy ratio be boosted to 18 per cent, but also a considerable reserve will be set aside for mergers and acquisitions, which the bank could not do in the past five years due to a lack of capital. — VNS