Foreign banks test the waters in Vietnam

The slow but steady modernisation of Vietnam's financial sector has encouraged foreign banks to test the waters here, taking small but significant stakes in some of their better performing counterparts.
British-based emerging markets specialist, Standard Chartered Bank, took an 8.56 percent stake in Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) last month for 22 million dollars after Australia's ANZ Bank paid 27 million dollars for 10 perent of Sacombank earlier in the year.
Other banks are showing signs of interest too, among them world-wide giants Citibank and HSBC, as Vietnam begins to surface on the global investment radar.
"For us, it was (somewhat) opportunistic. The occasion presented itself but Vietnam, arguably, is the last emerging economy in Asia where the potential is huge," said Bill Gemmel, general manager of Standard Chartered here.
Vietnam has a fast growing population and rising spending power, enough to provide in time a potentially large retail banking market, analysts say.
For the moment the foreign banks are biding their time, looking for an opening as the government liberalises the industry as part of its efforts to secure membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
"There are 82 million people in this country, with a middle class and entrepreneurs who are all getting richer," said Alain Cany, manager at HSBC in Vietnam.
"We are looking for a way to become a retail bank in Vietnam but we don't see how we can do that under our own name given current regulations," he said.
"The way to do it could be a long-term partnership with a local bank, which could possibly at some stage include taking a minority stake," he added.
Vietnam has been slowly reforming its banking industry since the early 1990s when it comprised of four state banks whose every move was scrutinised and cleared by the central bank.
"The first Vietnamese commercial banks were established in the early 1990s. It was one of the most important steps in the realisation of open economy in the banking sector," said Ly Xuan Hai, president of ACB.