BANK CAPITAL CONTRIBUTION NEEDS INVESTIGATION TO PREVENT CROSS-OWNERSHIP

It is necessary to investigate the investment and capital contribution of individuals or economic organisations related big bosses in the banking sector to prevent cross-ownership and manipulative ownership in banks, experts said.

At a recent workshop on building sustainable financial groups in Việt Nam, lawyer Trương Thanh Đức, Director of ANVI Law Firm, said that the 2024 Law on Credit Institutions supplements many regulations on strengthening the prevention of cross-investment, cross-ownership and manipulative ownership in credit institutions, but no matter how strict the law is, the most important step is implementation and supervision.

According to Đức, whether the law is strict or loose, the most important thing is that banks, shareholders and customers must respect and follow the principles and standards. In addition, inspection and supervision of management authorities must be strengthened to ensure the effectiveness and validity of the law.

According to experts, in Việt Nam, there is a situation whereby an individual, who is the bank’s existing shareholder, can circumvent ownership regulations by asking someone else to hold more of the bank and is its 'name' on paper, but in fact the individual is real owner. Management authorities are having a headache dealing with the situation, while many experts are also worry about the effectiveness of the law.

Banking expert Dr. Nguyễn Trí Hiếu said that due to the situation, management authorities could not control over the real ownership of an individual or an economic organisation in a bank.

However, Hiếu said management authorities can still unveil violation cases if they do it drastically. Investigating the relationship of bank-related people is not so difficult.

Lawyer Nguyễn Thanh Hà, Chairman of SBLAW Law Firm, also said there could be a situation where an employee is the name of the bank owner, but only on paper for their boss in a ‘backyard’ company due to pressure from their leader. Normally, such a ‘backyard’ company will have two boards of directors, in which the real leader is the bank owner. The employee only has the duty of signing on behalf of the leader, but does not have the right to make decisions, leading to major legal consequences.

According to expert Dr Lê Xuân Nghĩa, it is necessary to investigate the cash flow of big bosses investing in the banking sector to control the source of cross-ownership.

In addition, Nghĩa said, management authorities should tightly manage the cash flow of ‘backyard’ loans of bank owners.

Regarding the financial group model in Việt Nam, Phạm Xuân Hòe, former deputy director of the Banking Strategy Institute, said the limitation of this model is the intricate cross-ownership. In a non-transparent environment, it is extremely difficult to control. Under this model, it is easy to flow capital to ‘backyard’ companies or offer unfair and non-transparent preferences, which pose risks throughout the system.

According to Hòe, statistics on the capital assets of 11 large financial groups in Việt Nam show that their assets are nearly VNĐ14 quadrillion, accounting for about 67 per cent of the total value of the nation’s entire financial group system. Their outstanding loans are VNĐ9.9 quadrillion, accounting for 67.3 per cent of the total outstanding loans.

Source: VNS