J.P. Morgan Securities, Nordea 1, SICAV new shareholders of Military Bank

U.K- based giant J.P. Morgan Securities and Nordea 1, SICAV, an open-ended Luxembourg-based investment company, are in the updated list of shareholders holding a 1% or higher stake in Vietnamese lender Military Bank (MB).

The two new institutional shareholders own a total of 133 million MBB shares, equivalent to 2.53% of the bank's charter capital.

Of this, J.P. Morgan Securities, the asset manager of financial-banking giant JPMorgan Chase, possesses 79.4 million shares, or 1.5%, while Nordea 1, SICAV, managed by Nordea Fund, a member of Nordea Group - one of the largest financial-banking groups in the Nordic region, owns 54.2 million shares, or 1.03%.

Other foreign institutional shareholders in the list, announced on July 16, are Prudential Vietnam Life Insurance Company Limited from the U.K. and Pyn Elite Fund, a Finnish equity fund. Their ownership ratios remained unchanged from the previous list, at 1.24% and 1.63%, respectively.

The list also features domestic shareholders including military-run Viettel, holding 780 million shares (14.7%), Viettel Trading and Import-Export Company Limited 228.2 million shares (4.3%), Saigon Newport Corporation 376 million shares (7.11%), State Capital Investment Corporation 521.4 million shares (9.8%), and Vietnam Helicopter Corporation 427 million shares (8%).

Military Bank’s pre-tax profits reached VND13,428 billion ($534.29 million) in the first half of the year, up 5.4% year-on-year.

The figure was the fourth highest in the Vietnamese banking system, chief financial officer Nguyen Thi Thanh Nga told investors at an online conference on August 5.

Its credit expanded 9.4% year-on-year in the period, while the average figure of the Vietnamese banking system was 6%.

On the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange, MBB closed Wednesday at VND23,400 ($0.93) per share.