 |
| Vietnam comes to market |
Actual number of landmark listings successfully launched since then: zero.
Finally, though, it looks as if there is going to be some movement from Vietnam’s larger potential issuers. But it might yet be that the first deals of note appear not in Ho Chi Minh City but 600 miles to the south, in Singapore.
The domestic story has been one of dashed expectations. In May, Bao Viet Insurance, the state-run insurer, did make it to Vietnam’s informal over-the-counter market through a domestic auction, but the flotation didn’t go well.
Local regulations require all investors in an equitization (the first of two stages involved in getting a Vietnamese company onto the stock markets) to pay the same amount, with the sale price based on the average bid in a Dutch auction. Unfortunately, some rather exuberant retail investors bid the equivalent of about 25 times book price, bringing the average price for domestic investors out at about twice the level that more fundamentals-driven foreign investors had been bidding at. Consequently, when the shares began trading on the OTC market they fell sharply, prompting many investors to give up the 10% deposit they had put down for their shares, leaving them unclaimed.
