The shares of HDBank will list on the HCM City Stock Exchange (HoSE) on January 5, making it the first bank to go public in 2018.

 

The HCM City Development Bank, as it is formally known, has received approval from the southern bourse to list over 981 million shares under the HDB symbol at a reference price of 33,000 VND (1.45 USD).

 

This is considered quite high compared to the prices of other bank shares listed on stock markets, and is behind only Vietcombank, VPBank and ACB.

 

The listing, which is advised by Saigon Securities Incorporation (SSI), will value the lender at around 32.4 trillion VND (1.43 billion USD), making it one of the 20 biggest companies by market capitalisation on HoSE.

 

With an allowed trading band of 20 percent on each side of the reference price on opening day, HDB can potentially soar to 39,600 VND on listing.

 

HDB is currently one of the most favoured stocks in the over-the-counter (OTC) market, with its price rising consistently to occasionally reach 31,000 VND.

 

Since December 14, 2017, it has ceased to trade on the OTC to prepare for the listing.

 

On December 22, 2017, HDBank raised 300 million USD in an initial public offering (IPO) after selling around 21.5 percent of its shares at 32,000 VND based on book building.

 

The IPO got an overwhelming response from 76 foreign investors, who had registered to buy three times the number of shares on offer.

 

Among them were Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG, Japan’s Credit Saison Co, VinaCapital and JP Morgan Vietnam Opportunities Fund, who each own not more than 3 percent.

 

Earlier the lender had issued around 98 million shares to existing shareholders, raising 3.2 trillion VND.

 

Self-made billionaire, founder and chairwoman of private budget airline Vietjet Air, and deputy chairwoman of the bank, Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, bought more than 17.6 million shares then.

 

More than 38.5 million shares were sold to Sovico Holdings, which owns both the bank and the airline.

 

After the issuance, the bank’s charter capital rose to 9.8 trillion VND.

 

It also seeks to issue 20 million shares to its employees some time in the first quarter of 2018 at par to increase its capital to 10 trillion VND.

 

HDBank merged with Dai A Bank in 2013 and acquired France’s Société Générale Viet Finance the same year. The latter deal helped the bank tie up with a Japanese partner to create a finance company called HD Saison that currently has more than 6,000 counters nationwide.

 

HDBank expected to increase pre-tax profit by nearly 110 percent in 2017 to 2.4 trillion VND.-VNA