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Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. plans to open as many
as 15 branches in Vietnam once it receives a license to operate as
a fully owned foreign bank in the country, a bank country
representative told Dow Jones Newswires in a recent interview.
The 10 to 15 branches will be in place by the end of 2008, and
"further than that, it depends on the market," said ANZ Bank
Country General Manager Thuy Dam.
Vietnam on July 20 put into effect a regulation allowing foreign
banks to establish fully owned subsidiaries in the country.
So far, ANZ and the U.K.'s HSBC Holding PLC and Standard
Chartered PLC, which all currently have branches in Vietnam run by
local parents, have applied to establish their own local
subsidiaries.
Thuy said she doesn't know when permission to form ANZ's local
office will be given. A central bank official told Dow Jones last
week that it will probably give the go-ahead in the fourth
quarter.
"We have been very, very ready to start rolling out
branches...you will see a lot happening after we get our license,"
Thuy said. Development plans have been made and the money needed to
finance them set aside, she said.
Thuy did not give details on the size of the planned
investment.
The new subsidiary, when launched, will complement ANZ's other
investments in Vietnam, which include a 10 percent stake in one of
Vietnam's largest private retail banks - Sacombank - that ANZ
bought in 2005 for $27 million, and the $88 million-purchase in
July of a 10 percent stake in the country's largest brokerage,
Saigon Securities Inc. (SSI).
Vietnam has been opening up its banking sector to more foreign
investment. It passed a decree in April allowing foreign banks to
own 15 percent of domestic commercial banks, with the option to
increase the holding to 20 percent on approval from the
government.
HSBC was allowed in July by the State Bank of Vietnam to raises
its stake in Vietnam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank,
or Techcombank, to 15 percent from 10 percent, the first time the
April decree was applied.
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