SSI, UBS AG selected as next Vinamilk’s share sale advisors

HÀ NỘI — Saigon Securities Inc (SSI) and the Singaporean branch of Swiss financial services firm UBS AG have become advisors to sell another package of the State’s capital in Việt Nam’s biggest dairy producer Vinamilk.

The selection of the advisory firms was made last week by the State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC), which represents the Government to manage the State’s capital in Vinamilk.

The advisory firms for the previous deal were the Singaporean branch of Morgan Stanley Asia Limited, Saigon Securities Inc and VinaCapital Corporate Finance Việt Nam Limited.

In the upcoming share sale, the SCIC plans to offload another 3.33 per cent of its stake in Vinamilk.

In the previous deal that took place in December 12, 2016, the SCIC offered to sell its 130 million shares in the dairy firm but sold only 60 per cent of the shares.

The Singapore-based dairy group Fraser and Neave Limited (F&N) was the only foreign investor that was interested in Vinamilk shares in December 2016.

Its two subsidiaries F&N Dairy Investment Ltd and F&N Bev Manufacturing Pte Ltd spent nearly US$500 million on the deal.

VinaCapital said that the first share sale deal was the most valuable deals in Southeast Asia and one of the most successful deals in Việt Nam so far, despite the country’s current economy and short time of preparation.

VinaCapital recommended that the Vietnamese Government should have prepared better to attract more foreign investors to the deal, focused on selling techniques that meet international standards (book building) and created a more flexible settlement method for investors, if they wanted to make deposits in foreign currencies. — VNS