Joint merger bank named ‘Saigon Commercial Bank

People still make deposit in Ficombank after the merger

During the merger process, all shares of the three banks will be converted into the new bank’s stocks with their values remaining unchanged.

On December 23 ‘Saigon Commercial Bank’ will vote for a new Board of Directors.

The three above banks recently faced liquidation as they had used up short-term capital for medium and long-term loans. When their short-term capital ran scarce, all three banks faced liquidity problems.

Ficombank, Tin Nghia Bank and SCB reported a total chartered capital of VND10.6 trillion ($504.7 million) and total assets valued at VND154 trillion ($7.33 billion) by late September 2011.

After the merger, the situation improved with support from the State Bank. Chief of the State Bank said that BIDV would get involved in the new bank after the merger is finalized as a state capital representative to help ensure depositors’ rights.

“Depositor interests will be ensured. In the past months, central bank assisted these three banks to improve their liquidity,” the new leadership of SCB stated.

In the coming period, relevant parties will reassess operations of the three banks, their debts and assets and the State Bank will decide on state capital involvement ratio in the new bank after auditor assessment results are available, according to VnExpress.net.

On the same day, the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) announced that it would continue lowering lending rates to a 14.5-15.5 per cent range next week for exporters, agricultural firms, and small and medium enterprises, marking the fifth such move by the State-owned bank in four months.

Export credits will be made available at an interest rate of 15 per cent per year. Meanwhile, the rate applicable for loans for agricultural, and small and medium firms is 15.5 per cent and a lower rate, at 14.5per cent will be extended to corporate customers to cope with disaster aftermath.

The rate applied for those businesses under category A is loan free over a limited period of 180 days.

The rate cuts were aimed at easing the headwinds faced by such businesses and had been thoroughly weighed on the basis of corporate governance practices that they would not lead deposit savings rates to fall.

With the deposit savings rate capped at 14per cent a year by the central bank, there is suspicion over how the bank could profit with lowered lending rates because the minimum spread between deposit and lending rate should be three percentage points.