Two of the five richest people in Viet Nam had a poor start to the new year as they saw their net asset worth decrease.
On March, 2019, Forbes 2020 World Billionaires list included five billionaires from Viet Nam with total assets of US$13.6 billion.
They included returnees Pham Nhat Vuong, Nguyen Phuong Thao and Tran Ba Duong and newcomers Ho Hung Anh and Nguyen Dang Quang. The list, led by Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of online retail site Amazon, includes 2,153 billionaires with total assets of $8.7 trillion.
On the first day of 2020, while the total assets of the five Vietnamese billionaires increased by $8 million to hit $14.4 billion, the two newcomers saw their personal wealth decrease.
Chairman of Masan Group Nguyen Dang Quang loses US$4 million in his assets since March 2019. — Screenshot from Forbes
Data from the local stock market shows continuous declining sessions pulled Masan's shares (MSN) down from a peak of VND91,000 ($3.9) in May to VND56,500 on the last working day of December.
Also a newcomer to the list, Ho Hung Anh, chairman of Viet Nam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Techcombank), lost $3 million and 421 places in the ranking. He now ranks 1,770th in the list with assets of $1.4 billion.
Last year, Techcombank recorded pre-tax profit of nearly VND10.7 trillion, an year-on-year increase of 31 per cent. The bank is the second largest bank in Viet Nam after State-owned bank Vietcombank.
Biillionaire Ho Hung Anh — Screenshot from Forbes
According to Forbes, both Masan and Techcombank are major institutions in Viet Nam, ranked in the top 10 largest enterprises on the HCM Stock Exchange. Techcombank chairman Hung Anh and Masan chairman Quang used to manage both Techcombank and Masan. Last year, Hung Anh withdrew from Masan's vice chairman position to focus on Techcombank under the local banking industry’s regulations. Quang, on the other hand, is still vice chairman of Techcombank.
Not losing a penny from the assets last year, chairman of Thaco – the biggest car company in Viet Nam – Tran Ba Duong and his family still have $1.7 billion. But they lost 128 places in list to rank 1,477th.
Vingroup Chairman Pham Nhat Vuong, who is still the richest man in Viet Nam with $7.6 billion in assets, added another $1 billion to his assets but fell 13 places and now ranks 242nd in the list. At certain points last year, Vuong was among the 200 richest people on the planet.
Vingroup chairman Pham Nhat Vuong. — Screenshot from Forbes website
Earlier, Vuong shared with Bloomberg that he would spend $2 billion of his personal assets by selling a 10 per cent stake in Vingroup to bring the group’s car of VinFast to the US market.
Viet Nam's first female billionaire Nguyen Phuong Thao became richer and has a higher rank. Thao’s assets increased by $4 million to reach $2.7 billion and she is up 73 places from last year to rank 935th.
Thao’s budget airline, VietJet Air, which offers more than 300 flights a day, operates some 40 per cent of the nation's flights and became public in February 2017. She also has investments in HDBank and real estate.
Billionaire Nguyen Phuong Thao. — Screenshot from Forbes website
At the end of last year, shares of VietJet Air added 1.2 per cent to reach VND146,200 each while Vingroup’s shares stayed unchanged at VND115,000. — VNS