Impending collapse document fake, says Vietnam private lender Eximbank

Vietnamese private lender Eximbank said Tuesday that a document doing the rounds of social networks in recent days on the bank's "collapse risks" was not an official statement from its supervisory board.

The document did not originate within the bank and contained false information, it stressed.

The document in question, titled “Urgent petition and report on serious risks leading to operational safety issues and the potential collapse of Eximbank,” had been spreading on social media for the last several days.

The single page document carries no signature or seal. The document was not authentic and was of unclear origin, an Eximbank statement reiterated.

The bank said it was seeking assistance from relevant authorities to protect the legal rights and interests of the bank, and its customers, shareholders and partners by finding out the culprit behind the dissemination of the fake document.

Eximbank was operating “steadily, safely and effectively, meeting the diverse financial needs of its customers and partners.

“The bank’s financial data is consistently transparent and independently audited according to international standards,” the statement asserted.

It said key financial indicators were currently at high and stable levels, meeting capital and liquidity requirements; and it was fully capable of withstanding market risks. Circulation of the allegedly fake document led to a sell-off of Eximbank’s EIB shares.

During Monday’s trading session, nearly 100 million EIB shares or 5.35% of its charter capital changed hands. This was the highest transaction volume in nearly two years.

EIB closed down 4.45% from the reference price to VND18,250 ($0.73) per share, the strongest drop among banking stocks, negatively impacting the benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE). On Tuesday, the ticker lost an additional 0.27% to close at VND18,200.

Recently, Eximbank's board of directors had decided to convene an extraordinary general meeting of shareholder (EGM) to discuss changing the location of its headquarters and other relevant matters.

Notably, the EGM was to be held in Hanoi, even though the bank's headquarters is located in Ho Chi Minh City, where most previous meetings have taken place. A private source told The Investor that the board planned to relocate the bank’s headquarters to Hanoi.

The EGM has been called at a time the Gelex Group (HoSE: GEX) has acquired nearly 175 million EIB shares, representing 10% of the bank's charter capital, making it the largest shareholder.

Besides Gelex, the bank's shareholders as of August 13 included VIX Securities with 62.3 million shares (3.58% of charter capital), Le Thi Mai Loan with 17.9 million shares (1.03%), and Luong Thi Cam Tu with 19.5 million shares (1.12%). Loan has many links with private conglomerate Bamboo Capital Group.

Eximbank has set a pretax profit target of VND5.18 trillion ($210.8 million) for 2024, an increase of 90.5% from last year. It also aims for total asset expansion of 11% to VND223.5 trillion ($9.09 billion) and outstanding loan growth of 14.6% to VND161 trillion ($6.55 billion) by the end of this year.

In 2023, Eximbank reported pre-tax profits of VND2.72 trillion ($110.7 million), down nearly 27% from 2022 and equal to 54.4% of the annual target of VND5 trillion ($203.46 million) approved by its AGM.