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ANZ to sell STB stake to EIB: Report
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group will sell its entire 9.6 percent stake in Vietnam's Sacombank (HoSE: STB) to Eximbank (HoSE: EIB), another Vietnamese lender, a senior Sacombank executive was quoted in media reports on Thursday as saying.
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| Mr. Tran Xuan Huy - Chief Executive Officer of Sacombank |
The divestment is the first by a foreign bank in Vietnam, where 11 other domestic banks still have shares of up to 20 percent of their registered capital owned by foreign lenders.
"Recently the State Bank (of Vietnam) has approved ANZ's transfer of all its shares (9.6 percent of the registered capital) at Sacombank to Eximbank," chief executive officer Tran Xuan Huy was quoted by the Saigon Dau Tu Tai Chinh (Saigon Financial Investment) newspaper as saying.
The transfer would raise Eximbank's total shares in Sacombank to 9.73 percent, Huy said without giving any value of the sale.
Officials at Sacombank, or Saigon Thuong Tin Bank, could not be immediately reached for comment.
Shares in Sacombank ended 1.25 percent lower at 15,800 dong each on Thursday and Eximbank shares lost 1.38 percent to end at 14,300 dong. The VN Index closed down 2.26 percent at 340.94 points on Thursday due to sales under pressure of margin calls.
ANZ became a strategic investor in Sacombank in 2005. In 2008 it was granted a license to establish a 100 percent-owned lender in Vietnam.
"It is certain that it has changes in its ownership and investment structure in Vietnam," Huy was quoted as saying by the newspaper, which is a supplementary edition of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee-run Saigon Giai Phong daily.
Sacombank's gross profit last year reached an estimated 2.74 trillion dong ($130.3 million), Huy said in the interview with the newspaper, above the annual target that aimed to raise the bank's gross profit in 2011 by 12 percent to 2.7 trillion dong. ($1=21,026 dong)
reuters
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