Three sales executives leave Vietnam carmaker VinFast: Reuters

Three senior sales and customer-service executives left Vietnamese electric vehicle producer VinFast this week, Reuters reported.

In a statement to Reuters, VinFast said Gareth Dunsmore, deputy chief executive for global sales and marketing, had left "due to personal reasons and we respect his decision", the news wire service said Friday.

VinFast added two other U.S.-based executives had left because of "changes in the management model and specific business requirements": Greg Tebbutt, who had been chief marketing officer, and Craig Westbrook, former chief service officer.

Dunsmore, Tebbutt, and Westbrook could not be immediately reached for comment, Reuters wrote.

VinFast started to deliver its first EVs to buyers in the U.S. on March 1 in California. The company last November shipped 999 of its all-electric VF8 SUVs to the state from its manufacturing complex in northern Vietnam’s Hai Phong City. It is preparing to build an EV and battery manufacturing complex in the state of North Carolina with $2 billion in initial investment, and is eyeing an initial public offering in the U.S.

VinFast is set to open the U.S. facility in 2025 instead of 2024 as originally planned. “In 2022, we entered a series of agreements with North Carolina state and local authorities to build a manufacturing facility spanning across a site measuring approximately 712 hectares in North Carolina. Commissioning of the facility is targeted for 2025,” wrote a VinFast report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, widely known as SEC.

SEC publicized the report via its website on March 9 (U.S. time).

In February, VinFast consolidated operations in the U.S. and Canada, cutting some 80 jobs, including former U.S. chief financial officer Rodney Haynes, said Reuters. It added VinFast said last June it had ended its contract with Emmanuel Bret, the predecessor as deputy CEO for global sales to just-departed Dunsmore. Three other senior executives also left at that time.

In its SEC-publicized prospectus, the firm wrote: “We had net losses of VND18,950.2 billion, VND32,219.0 billion and VND49,848.9 billion ($2,111.2 million) in 2020, 2021 and 2022, respectively, and total debt (which is our short-term and current portion of long-term interest-bearing loans and borrowings and long-term interest-bearing loans and borrowings, excluding borrowings from related parties) of VND56,204.5 billion ($2,380.3 million) as of December 31, 2022.”