Vietnamese billionaire’s daughter spends $25 mln on Masan share purchases

Nguyen Yen Linh, the daughter of chairman Nguyen Dang Quang of consumer goods giant Masan Group (HoSE: MSN), has purchased nearly 8.5 million MSN shares over the past three weeks, meeting 85% of her target.

After the transactions ended on November 18, Linh raised her holding in Masan Group to 0.59% from the previous zero, she said in a filing to the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange.

MSN prices dropped from VND77,900 ($3.06) a share on October 28, the first day of Linh’s transactions, to VND70,300. Assuming Linh bought the shares at an average price of VND75,000 apiece, she likely has spent VND637 billion ($25 million) on the batch.

According to the filing, Quang directly owns only 18 MSN shares, while his wife, Nguyen Hoang Yen, holds 50.9 million shares, or a 3.54% stake.

Linh’s transactions came after SK Investment Vina 1 Pte. Ltd., a subsidiary of South Korea’s SK Group, sold 76.38 million MSN shares via the put-through method on October 31, cutting its holding in the Vietnamese company to 3.86% of the charter capital from the earlier 8.72%.

Masan Group said the transaction was a “notable trade for a non-foreign-ownership-limit (non-FOL) stock in Vietnam” and anchored by existing institutional investors based in Asia, Europe, and the U.S. The remaining shares of SK Group are subject to a customary lock-up period.

Masan Group said in September that SK Group will sell a 7.1% stake in WinCommerce to the latter's majority shareholder Masan Group for $200 million.

According to data by Saigon Securities Inc. (SSI), Masan Group is currently 31.19% owned by Masan JSC, 13.21% by Sunflower Construction Company Limited, 2.76% by Ardolis Investment Pte. Ltd., and 2.21% by the Government of Singapore.