Vietcombank is no longer major shareholder of MBBank and Eximbank

Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) has announced that the bank is no longer the major shareholder of both Vietnam Export Import Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Eximbank) and Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MBBank).

On December 6, Vietcombank sold 6,689,570 shares of Eximbank, thereby reducing its shareholding from 5.39 per cent to 4.84 per cent.

Vietcombank sold 19.39 million shares of MBBank directly on the stock exchange from December 03 to 07, thereby reducing its shareholding from 5.87 per cent to 4.98 per cent.

With MBBank's shares priced around VND22,000 each in the period from December 03 to December 07, Vietcombank expected to gain over VND400 billion ($17.2 million).

Previously, Vietcombank auctioned 53.4 million MBBank shares of MBBank in October, but only 10,000 shares were acquired. As a result, Vietcombank changed to sell MBBank shares on the stock exchange.

With the shareholding reduction below 5 per cent in Eximbank and MBBank, Vietcombank has completed its capital withdrawal plan at credit institutions as regulated by the State Bank's regulations. Previously, the bank also divested at Cement Finance Company, Saigonbank and Orient Commercial Bank (OCB). It is estimated that the bank will record hundreds of billions of dong in profit from divestments this year.

Vietcombank is one of the largest banks in Vietnam and operating most effectively in the banking sector. Its market capitalization of nearly $9 billion is double that of BIDV and Vietinbank.

The bank has total assets of approximately VND1 quadrillion ($42.9 billion), of which loan size accounts for approximately VND627 trillion ($26.9 billion). The bank is also mobilizing about VND773 billion ($33.2 million) of deposits from customers.

Last year, Vietcombank recorded a pre-tax profit of VND11.3 trillion ($485 million), a record profit in the banking sector. In the first nine months of this year, Vietcombank reported a pre-tax profit of VND11,683 billion ($502million).