Word: sacombank
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Just looking at the numbers, these should be halcyon days for Vietnam's fledgling banking industry. The country's economy is booming-GDP surged 8.2% last year-and there's a vast pool of potential customers: only 8% of Vietnam's 85 million people even have bank accounts. At Sacombank, one of Vietnam's private commercial lenders, profits shot up 50% last year, and depositors doubled to 350,000. But Nguyen Quang Trung, Sacombank's deputy director, is anything but complacent. "We have to expand quickly throughout the country," Trung says. "We need to build capital. Our whole banking sector...
...currently growing at rates unheard of in more mature economies. Out of a total of 7 million bank accounts held by Vietnamese, 6 million were opened in just the past two years. Up to now, the biggest beneficiaries have been Vietnam's 34 small private banks such as Sacombank that, unlike the state-owned banks, are relatively unburdened by government directives aimed at managing the economy. Catering to individual depositors and small-business borrowers, private lenders have powered much of the industry's recent growth. Among their target customers are people like Nguyen Thi Tuyet. Four years...
...Another survival strategy: sell stakes in your bank to foreigners, so you can tap their capital and expertise. "With foreign partners, we can think 'O.K., you are the competition, but we are friends, so let's share experience,'" says Trung of Sacombank, which has three foreign partners, including ANZ, holding 10% each. (Vietnam limits foreign ownership of local banks to 30%.) Such local matches are a typical developing-market entry strategy for multinational institutions, which are keen to share their superior technology and know-how in evaluating lending risks in exchange for local knowledge and existing national networks...
| 1 |