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Vietnam’s State Divestment Story Is Back in Focus
Two recent cases, Becamex IDC and Petrolimex, offer a useful glimpse into Vietnam’s renewed push to improve market structure.
The regulatory issue is clear. Public companies are required to have at least 10% of voting shares held by at least 100 non-major shareholders. Becamex currently falls well below this threshold, with only 4.56% of charter capital held by non-major shareholders, while Petrolimex is slightly below the requirement at just over 9.4%.
For Becamex, the issue goes beyond compliance. Reducing state ownership from 95.44% to 65% would lift free float well above the requirement and raise additional new capital. This would be meaningful for BCM, given its direct involvement in industrial park, urban, logistics, and infrastructure-related projects.
Petrolimex’s plan to sell nearly 23.3 million treasury shares is smaller in scale, but points in the same direction: higher free float, stronger capital structure, and more investable state-linked companies.
At the market level, these cases matter for two reasons.
First, Vietnam needs more quality supply, better liquidity, and higher transparency to support a deeper institutional market. This is especially relevant as the country enters a more ambitious infrastructure investment cycle, where capital mobilization from both the state and the market will become increasingly important.
Second, the lesson from Indonesia is timely. MSCI’s recent concerns over free float, ownership transparency, and investability show that market classification is not only about trading infrastructure, but also about whether listed companies are genuinely accessible to investors.
State divestment in Vietnam will not be quick. Valuation gaps, approval procedures, and market conditions can all delay execution. But the direction is right — and the incentive is becoming stronger.
Vietnam needs substantial capital to finance its ambitious infrastructure agenda. With state ownership in listed companies estimated at around 25% of total market capitalization, equivalent to roughly USD100bn, even a partial divestment could unlock sizeable new supply and meaningful capital inflows into the market.
