Petrolimex to divest 40 per cent stake from PG Bank this quarter

The divestment will be implemented via a public auction at the Hanoi stock exchange, which is expected to be organised this quarter.

The divestment comes as PGBank does not merge with HDBank. In June 2020, Petrolimex threatened to pull its capital from the subsidiary PGBank if it did not merge with private HDBank before August 31 that year.

The merger between PGBank and HDBank had been pursued for years, despite the State Bank of Vietnam’s approval of the merger in principle in 2018.

At the time, Tran Ngoc Nam, a board member of PGBank signed a document, as a shareholder, notifying both banks that if the merger was not completed by August 31, 2020, Petrolimex would sell its 40 per cent stake to other investors.

However, the tie-up deal between the two banks was not completed as expected due to unspecified reasons. In addition, the problem is that in April 2021, HDBank officially withdrew from a potential deal to acquire PGBank.

Petrolimex currently holds more than 50 per cent of the domestic gasoline retail market share. In its first-quarter consolidated financial statement, Petrolimex reported net revenue of over $2.82 trillion, up 75.2 per cent on-year.

However, during the period, Petrolimex's financial expenses jumped nearly 61 per cent on-year while selling and administrative expenses were unchanged, thereby the company’s profit after tax reported a decrease by nearly 40 per cent to $19.25 million. Of which, profit after tax belonging to shareholders of the parent company slipped by 63 per cent to only $10.57 million.