Vietnam to ease foreign ownership ceiling in banks-govt

The Vietnamese government is preparing to amend rules to allow foreign investors to own more than 30 percent of a Vietnamese bank, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung was quoted as saying in a statement late on Monday.

The government “will soon issue a decree allowing foreign investors to buy Vietnamese bank shares at a ratio above the current 30-percent ceiling”, Dung was quoted in the statement as telling visiting Nobuyuki Hirano, president of Japan’s Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.

Vietnam currently caps foreign ownership in a domestic bank at 30 percent, with a 15-percent limit for a non-strategic investor while a foreign strategic investor can own 20 percent.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/