Answering a question from a shareholder about whether the company could be bought out amid the increasing recent purchases of MWG shares by foreign investors, Nguyen Duc Tai said he does not worry about that due to certain reasons.

The founding members and employees own around 40 percent of the company’s shares while the rest is mostly held by organizations and investment funds, he said.

If someone could take over the company but lack a good management team it will be like "biting your own tongue," he said.

"I think the capability of the management team is the soul of a company," he said, adding that a company with a few thousand outlets which lacks good management would eventually disappear as shown by other, even bigger companies in the past.

Asked about rumors that employees buy from unauthorized suppliers and sell at the company’s grocery chain Bach Hoa Xanh, he said the management needs to make sure that workers earn enough and enjoy their work to prevent corruption, and Mobile World does both.

The company has no plans at the moment to take its subsidiaries public, he clarified.

Mobile World reported post-tax profits of VND3.92 trillion ($169.2 million) last year, up 2 percent from 2019.

It has 4,059 outlets, including 1,020 opened last year.a