Korea Investment & Securities Co., one of South Korea’s leading securities firms, officially set up the first investment fund in Hanoi, Vietnam on April 27, 2006. This investment fund, named KITMC Viet Nam Growth Fund, will generalise investment items in South Korea and then invest into the capital market in Vietnam.
Although there were several professional foreign-led investment funds in Vietnam, this was the first time a foreign investment fund was founded via a foreign capital firm. At the founding ceremony, Mr. Tran Xuan Ha, Chairman of the Vietnam State Securities Commission (SSC), said: “We are resolute in our decision to reform and create more goods for the development of the Vietnamese stock exchange in the coming time.”
With the target of mobilising initial US$50 million, this fund began receiving investment capital from South Korean investors on February 29. As planned, this fund is entitled to invest in many markets with various shares, including those in State-run companies, private companies, stock market and bond market.
Investors forecast that the Vietnamese stock market will have further a robust growth in 2006 when more State-run enterprises will go public. In October 2005, Korea Investment & Securities Co. set up cooperative ties in professional fields with the Vietcombank Securities Company (VCBS) under the Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank).
Then, in December 2005, a group of several investors in large South Korean organisations arrived in Vietnam to attend the economic and capital market of Vietnam and meet authorities in the credit sector of Vietnam. Via this fund, Korea Investment & Securities Co. will officially invest in the securities market and the capital management field in Vietnam.
Hong Sun Il, Director of Korea Investment & Securities Co., said the second investment fund will begin attracting capital from South Korean individual investors from June 2006. In the coming time, the agency will attract American and European investors and set up similar investment funds via legal entities in New York, London and Hong Kong. The agency is also considering the employment of more specialists to study Vietnam and the capital management field, and set up representative office or legal entity company in Vietnam.
Korea Investment & Securities Co. is a leading capital management and banking company from South Korea and is the largest general securities firm there with 1,600 billion won investment capital, a 2,300-staff strong workforce, a 120-branch network in South Korea and three legal entity firms abroad. In particular, since 1995, the Korea Investment Trust Company (KITC), the precursor of the current Korea Investment & Securities Co., has cooperated with Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance and a South Korea’s government organisation in the project to apply South Korean investment trust regulations in Vietnam. The project was disrupted by the Asian financial crisis in 1997. Until 2005, Korea Investment & Securities Co. actively resumed the cooperation project in Vietnam.
With this fund, Korea Investment & Securities Co. officialised foreign investment into Vietnamese capital market, contributed to the development of the credit market and applied new credit methods of Vietnam, increased understanding of South Korean investors about the Vietnamese economy and its potentialities.
K.P
Vietnamese
