PG Bank appoints new chairman

Petrolimex Commercial Joint Stock Bank (PG Bank) has elected Oliver Schwatzhaupt, board member and deputy head of its banking risk management committee, as chairman for the term 2020-2025 from Thursday.

Schwatzhaupt, a German, graduated with a master's degree in economics from Germany's Justus Liebig Universit. He has 29 years of experience in banking and finance and risk management.

He used to hold many important positions at world-renowned organizations like: director of credit risk management at DZBank, director of credit rating management at CommerzBank, deputy general director cum director of risk management at Emirates NBD Group.

In Vietnam, Schwatzhaupt held positions like head of risk management from 2010-2012, and deputy general director cum head of risk management from 2019-2022 at Maritime Bank (MSB).

The appointment of Schwatzhaupt took place after three board members of the bank representing Petrolimex's capital contribution, namely chairman Nguyen Quang Dinh, board member Tran Ngoc Nam and board member Luu Van Tuyen, automatically lost their status after the gasoline retail giant had completed divestment. Another board member Nguyen Manh Hai also resigned from May 5 for personal reasons.

Therefore, three out of five board members of PGBank are former employees of MSB, namely Oliver Schwatzhaupt, Nguyen Phi Hung and Nilesh Ratilal Banglorewala.

Previously, three organizations connected with a large corporation completed the transfer of 120 million PGB shares from Petrolimex, thereby holding 40% of the bank's chartered capital.

In fact, this ratio is not enough to help this group of investors have a dominant voice to make decisions at PGBank. PGBank's 2023 annual general meeting of shareholders (AGM) recorded two authorized representatives holding a nearly 51% stake in PGBank.

According to The Investor's sources, a series of legal entities owned more than 80 million shares of PGBank at the time of PGBank's 2023 AGM. They belonged to TNG Holdings-MSB group, like Hano-VID Property JSC, Viet Han Trading-Advertising-Construction-Real estate, American Property JSC, Thanh Vinh Constructuon Services Trading, NamDuc Invesment And Infrastructure Development Company Limited. Many individuals in this group also hold large amounts of PGB shares.

MSB and PGBank have a close relationship. For a long time, both banks were introduced as members in the banking and finance segment of TNG Holdings. However, TNG Holdings no longer introduces PGBank as an associate company in the field of finance-banking.

MSB shareholders at the AGM held on April 21 did not approve a proposal on merging MSB with another bank. This shows that MSB probably no longer plans to merge with PGBank, and that the owners of TNG Holdings have decided to sell PGBank.

Therefore, it is not ruled out that the old group of investors has accepted to cede the controlling shares to the new group, and the recent transactions based on agreements showed clear signs of this.

Specifically, in four trading sessions from April 21-27, 2023, 87.5 million shares of PGBank, equivalent to a 29.2% stake, were put through transactions on the unlisted public company market UPCoM with a total value of about VND2.44 trillion ($103.9 million), equivalent to the average price of VND27,700 ($1.18) per share.

Including an auction, up to 69.2% of PGB shares changed hands within just a few days.