HAGL overseas listing green light

Shareholders of the group (HAGL), at a recent extraordinary shareholders’ meeting in Ho Chi Minh City, approved its plan to raise $200 million by issuing bonds to be listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange.

HAGL chairman Doan Nguyen Duc said: “The firm is to issue five-year bonds in early January,  2011 to fund five hydro-power plants and rubber tree planting projects in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.”

Duc added that annual coupon of the bonds would be announced after Standard & Poor and Moody worked out credit ratings for the group, likely in January, 2011.

The two international rating agencies engaged HAGL after Credit Suisse had signed an agreement to assist the group with issuing the bonds.

Vo Truong Son, deputy general director of HAGL: “It is difficult to look for big loans, particularly the long-term ones from local banks and the fact is that lending interest rates are high.”

Also, to prepare sufficient capital for investment projects in the long term and to cash in on the coming opportunities, HAGL has sold the majority of 19 million of its recently-issued shares  valued at around $70 million to Deutsche Bank and seeking a secondary listing in London.

“We have sold 16 million shares to Deutsche Bank in the normal way we sold shares to foreign investors and the bank will then turn the shares into global depository receipts and list them on the London Stock Exchange,” Duc said.

He added that HAGL originally intended to sell the whole 19 million of shares to  Deutsche Bank. However, some recent changes in the company’s plan had spared the other three million of shares for Saigon Securities Incorporation (SSI).

The group has completed legal procedure in Vietnam to carry out the deal with Deutsche Bank, while the bank and its Indian partner investment bank Elara Capital, are seeking interested investors and finalising necessary formalities for the London listing.

HAGL, which also sold convertible bonds worth some $60 million to Singapore’s Temasek earlier this year, began as a furniture manufacturer in 1990, but has been expanding into other sectors including real estate, hotels and resorts, hydropower, mining and football. With registered capital of VND2.93 trillion ($150 million), the group has set itself a pre-tax profit target of at least VND2.7 trillion ($142.1 million) in 2010, 57 per cent higher than in 2009.