Vietnam stock market status upgrade: officials, experts to discuss implications

A conference on Tuesday will discuss information disclosure by listed firms and other implications of an upgrade to Vietnam’s stock market status.

The conference, titled “Vietnam stock market: Status upgrade and transparency in listed firms' information disclosure,” is being organized by Nhadautu.vn / TheInvestor.vn in Hanoi on October 10.

It aims to raise awareness of market participants and propose measures to accelerate the upgrade.

Officials from the State Securities Commission, ministries, the Central Economic Commission, the National Assembly’s Economic and Financial-State Budget committees, experts, and representatives of auditing firms and investment fund management firms will attend the conference.

The Vietnamese government is working hard to get the local stock market status elevated to that of an “emerging market" from the current “frontier market” by 2025.

A status upgrade can attract billions of dollars from international funds, experts have said.

The country has met eight of 17 criteria set by the U.S.’s Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) and seven out of nine criteria by the UK’s FTSE Russell.

Besides technical factors, market regulators give much importance to quality of information disclosure. The market upgrade will be sustainable and substantive only when listed companies strictly observe Vietnamese regulations in this regard and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), experts have said.

As of last week, FTSE Russell, a subsidiary of the London Stock Exchange Group, had placed Vietnam on a watch list for a possible reclassification to secondary emerging market status. Vietnam has remained on this list since September 2018.

Link to the conference