Securities firms are shaking up their leadership ranks at the beginning of the year as they want to lift performance amid fiercer market competition.

VNDirect Securities Corporation on January 15 appointed Do Ngoc Quynh, a former senior officer at the Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV), as its acting CEO.

Quynh replaced Pham Minh Huong, who had been the chairwoman of the board of directors cum chief executive officer since April 21 last year.

Quynh is a former Director of Capital and Money Business at BIDV and current General Secretary of the Vietnam Bond Market Association. He has 22 years of experience in the financial-banking sector.

HCM City Securities Corporation (HSC) on January 9 decided to let Deputy CEO Trinh Hoai Giang take the role of the CEO at the firm.

Giang will assume the new role from April 1, 2020, the company said in a statement. Johan Nyvene, the current CEO, has been in the position since 2007.

Giang has been in charge of Investments and Operations at HSC for 13 years. He is widely known as a highly experienced senior manager.

HDB Securities Co (HDBS) has also made changes to its board of directors.

The firm’s shareholders on January 6 approved a plan to dismiss all four members of the board and decided there will be three members, instead of four, in the new board. Two of the new three members became the firm’s chairwoman and vice chairman.

There is a lot of pressure for those companies, especially VNDirect and HSC, to maintain their market share amid rapid expansion of foreign-funded securities firms.

Reports from the Ho Chi Minh and Ha Noi stock exchanges showed both HSC and VNDirect lost market shares in stockbroking.

HSC needed to improve its status on the market with a focus on product diversification, enhancement of quality for the staff, digitalisation of all services, and improvement of technology and risk management systems, Giang told Dau tu Chung khoan (Investment Securities) newspaper.

The company needed to change and innovate to become more versatile amid market volatility, he said.

A volatile market harmed securities firms’ performances and results in 2019.

Total net revenue recorded by HSC in 2019 fell 26 per cent year on year to VND1.26 trillion (US$54.5 million). Post-tax profit dropped more than a third to VND432 billion.

The figures were equal to 76 per cent of the full-year net revenue target and 64 per cent of the full-year post-tax profit target set by the shareholders in April 2019.

VNDirect has not yet released its full-year earnings report. However, the company posted 5.4 per cent and 29.4 per cent year-on-year declines in nine-month revenue and post-tax profit, which were VND1.13 trillion and VND233 billion. — VNS