Securities trading floors lit red, billionaires lose trillions of dong

From left: Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, Trinh Van Quyet, Pham Nhat Vuong

The stock market witnessed a succession of tough days last week with the VN Index falling by 117 points from the peak of 1,105 points gained on February 2, 2018. Vietnamese shares plummeted following the sharp falls of the global stock markets. The Guardian reported that the US stock market lost $1 trillion worth of capitalization value in the first five days of February and the total net asset value of the 500 richest billionaires in the world dropped by $114 billion. The same situation happened in Vietnam. Toquoc.vn reported that on February 1, the stock assets of Pham Nhat Vuong, the first Vietnamese dollar billionaire, was $5.6 billion, or $800 million higher than $4.8 billion on January 16. The figure dropped to $4.8 billion again on February 6, and another $300 million had ‘evaporated’ by February 9.

On the last trading session last week, VIC shares of Vingroup, where Vuong is the chair, dropped by another 3.3 percent, traded at VND76,400 per share. VIC is one of the blue chips in the Vietnamese market thanks to the good business performance of Vingroup, its subsidiaries and daring investment projects, including a made-in-Vietnam automobile manufacturing project. The other top 10 richest stock billionaires have seen their assets drop dramatically. Phap Luat reported that Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, the CEO of the budget airline Vietjet, had lost VND1.6 trillion by February 6 as Vietjet shares lost 6.97 percent of value, or VND12.9 trillion. Trinh Van Quyet, chair of FLC Group, the second richest billionaire, and Tran Dinh Long, chair of Hoa Phat, who is in the fourth position on the list of richest stock billionaires, suffered the slightest losses. FLC share value dropped sharply by 6.89 percent, but this was only VND390 per share. Quyet’s value decreased by VND56.4 billion only. As for Long, Hoa Phat shares decreased by 6.71 percent in value, or VND4,100 per share, causing Long to lose VND1.5 trillion. However, on February 6, Hoa Phat share value increased again by 1.75 percent, or VND1,000. His stock assets increased also by VND381 billion. Though the listed companies all reported big profits for 2017, the share prices did not increase proportionally. Despite the sharp falls in recent days, analysts are optimistic about the long-term prospects of the market. Zing quoted analysts as saying that Vietnamese stocks remain attractive with high GDP growth rate and 94 percent of listed companies making profits in 2017.

US$1=VND22,000