Vietnam Maritime Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Maritime Bank) has failed to get approval from shareholders to trade its shares on the stock exchanges.

At the bank’s annual shareholder meeting held on Friday, 97 per cent of shareholders disapproved of the proposal put forward by the bank’s board to list shares on one of the three major stock exchanges.

The three exchanges in question are the HCM Stock Exchange (HoSE), Ha Noi Stock Exchange (HNX) and Unlisted Public Company Market (UPCoM).

The bank submitted its application for share listing to the Vietnam Securities Depository (VSD) in January 2017 and had to provide additional documents to comply with VSD requirements. Maritime Bank reapplied to VSD in early April.

Shares of Maritime Bank have been traded on the Over-The-Counter (OTC) market since June 26, 2009 under code MSB. The bank’s share price has fallen from a starting level of VND19,200 (85 US cents) per share to around VND4,000 per share.

According to the bank’s management board, the price of bank shares has remained low due to the downward trend of the economy in general and the banking sector in particular.

In 2017, Maritime Bank targets to increase its total assets, mobilised capital and lending by 15 per cent, 17 per cent and 14 per cent to VND106.6 trillion (US$4.74 billion), VND72.3 trillion and VND51.75 trillion, respectively.

The bank also plans to raise its pre-tax profit slightly to VND165 billion from last year’s figure of VND164 billion. Maritime Bank plans to make dividend payouts at a rate of 5 per cent for 2017 and zero for 2016.

Tran Xuan Quang, vice chairman of the bank’s standing management board, said at the meeting that Maritime Bank would continue provisioning its bad debts in order to make sure the bank’s operations are secure.

Maritime Bank expects its pre-provision profit for 2017 will reach VND2.2 trillion and it projects to handle VND7 trillion worth of bad debts and maintain a bad debt ratio of below 3 per cent by the end of 2017. — VNS