HANOI (AFP) — Vietnam is to list its biggest state-owned bank on the stock exchange early next year as part of a plan to sell off about 30 percent of the shares, its chairman said Friday.
Vietcombank, the communist country's first state-owned bank to float, will initially list 6.5 percent of its stock on the Ho Chi Minh City exchange next year.
The offer opens on December 26 and the bank will list on the exchange about three months later, Chairman Nguyen Hoa Binh told reporters.
The rest of the shares will be opened up to foreign and local investors.
Vietnam has been slowly reforming its banking industry since the early 1990s, when it consisted of four state banks whose every move was scrutinised and cleared by the central bank.
The country has a fast-growing population and rising spending power, enough to provide in time a potentially large retail banking market, analysts say.
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