|
Dragon Capital to raise Vietnam investment fund
- New IndoChina Opportunities Fund aims to raise $50 million-$100 million
- Vietnamese government expected to sign off on privatization plans for 41 big state-owned enterprises
- Dragon Capital aims to partner foreign firms in buying stakes in SOEs
Dragon Capital, the largest institutional investor in the Vietnamese stock market, is raising up to $100 million in a new fund that will invest in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and look for investment opportunities as the Vietnamese government embarks on a major effort to privatize state-owned assets, Dragon Capital Chief Executive Dominic Scriven said Wednesday.
"We are hoping to reach a first close in the first half of this year, raising $50 million to $100 million...This will be used to invest in private companies in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos," Scriven told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview in London.
"Vietnam is our big home market. In geopolitical terms, and therefore also in economic terms, Vietnam is creating a zone of influence in Indochina principally as a counterweight to the influence of China," Scriven said.
"There are strong flows of capital, politics, aid and people from Vietnam to Laos and Cambodia. More people in the Laos and Cambodian governments speak Vietnamese than any other foreign language," said Scriven, who is British, speaks Vietnamese, and also sits on the boards of several Vietnamese firms.
Dragon Capital, based in Ho Chi Minh City, started investing in Vietnam in 1994 with an initial $16 million and now has about $1 billion worth of assets under management in the growing communist country, which has started to more openly embrace capitalism since its membership in the World Trade Organization in 2007.
About $750 million of Dragon's assets are in Vietnamese stocks, with another $100 million in real estate, $100 million in private equity and $50 million in fixed income.
Scriven said most of the money to be raised by Dragon's new IndoChina Opportunities Fund will go to Vietnam.
"At the end of the first quarter, the government will have signed off on 41 big state-owned enterprise master plans. These are the top 41 SOEs," he said.
The move is similar to the privatization efforts seen over the past decade in former communist countries across Europe.
To ensure its privatization effort goes according to plan, the Vietnamese Communist Party is also conducting a "self-criticism" movement, targeting party officials who don't adhere to the government plan.
"This is designed to make sure that anybody who doesn't follow these [privatization] plans has to criticize themselves. They're very serious," Scriven said.
"Part of our strategy is to link up with foreign strategic investors and help them access stakes in these state enterprises and help state enterprises access foreign partners. That would be the best place for us to play," Scriven said.
MarketWatch
|
