Founder mulls return to Sacombank after five-year absence

The information of potential candidates to participate in the restructuring of Sacombank, one of Vietnam’s largest joint stock commercial banks, has attracted increasing public interest in recent days, particularly thanks to the presence of some ‘heavyweight candidates.’

Among them, investors are especially interested in the domestic and foreign shareholders’ groups, including New York-based investment bank Evercore Group, M&A consulting firm Redsun Capital Limited and Mr. Dang Van Thanh - founder and president of Thanh Thanh Cong Group (TTC).

This is the first time in five years Mr. Dang Van Thanh officially returned to the finance and banking sector, the field he once gained his name, after many years of absence since the ‘Sacombank incident’ in 2012.

The great name associated with Sacombank

Over the past five years, following the transferring of power at Sacombank, which Mr. Dang Van Thanh established and leaded to development, the market and financial investors always hold questions about his current life and career, as well as his family’s.

People often think of Sacombank when referring to Mr. Thanh. However, Thanh Thanh Cong, now TTC Group, is the actual place where Thanh and his family began their business.

TTC was established in 1979 as a business facility for molasses. His family was directly responsible for all activities of coordination, management, network expansion and scale development, and deeper participation in producing sugar and by-product markets.

When Mr. Thanh started to join in the finance and banking sector in 1991, all TTC’s activities were led by his wife, Ms. Huynh Bich Ngoc, and later, his children. The company has gradually expanded its investment to the fields of real estate, energy, hospitality and education.

After transferring managing activities at Sacombank in 2012, Mr. Thanh continuously concentrated on developing the core fields of TTC with his family.

In fact, TTC’s growth rate has been maintained steadily over the years, accompanied by the expansion in terms of scale and performance.

With its business passion associated with the principle of "Standard Management – Responsibility Control – Professional Operation,” TTC brand is now recognized through the promotions of clean, green and modernized investment activities, achieving the international standards.

Mr. Thanh shared that the most important thing is decoding the management formulation before applying it to the operations of the business to achieve the objectives in accordance with orientation for sustainable development, as well as welcoming the trend in Vietnam and the world in every business sector.

From banking and finance to sugarcane, real estate and education, the motto "For the community and the local development" has always been considered strongly by TTC.

Effective economic development must be associated with the objective of stabilizing and ensuring the lives of employees, the interests of shareholders, customers and partners. This is the only way to create a strong basis for the goal of sustainable development of enterprises.

Let us take a look back on the year 2012, which marked a turbulent period for Mr. Dang Van Thanh and his family.

Thanh’s leaving Sacombank was associated with negative information surrounding the bank's management, especially on the outstanding loans of the group of companies that also involved TTC Group.

This incident had negatively affected the reputation of Mr. Thanh and his family for a long time.

However, there has never been any confirmation that the management of Mr. Thanh and his associates had caused risks and damages to Sacombank.

In April 2013, when those allegations had attracted public attention, Sacombank representatives had asserted that these loans were all in-term debts with good credit history.

At the time of Thanh’s transferring management in May 2012, Sacombak’s operations were really strong with a large network, and many potential retail customers. Moreover, Sacombank’s total assets consisted of not only its branches, offices and outlets throughout the country, but also the surplus accumulated through the operation process.

And the return of Sacombank “founder”?

Since leaving Sacombank, Mr. Thanh and his family have devoted all their energy and resources to the extensive development of TTC with the goal of diversifying and improving the quality of Vietnamese-branded products and services.

The passion of the businessman now remains as strong as when he was leading Sacombank, as he once shared: “We believe that those practical contributions are the most convincing explanation for our devoted efforts”. To date, I and my family members all have clean legal records.

Mr. Thanh’s decision to restructure Sacombank this time come from the support of current shareholders and the willingness to cooperate of trusted international investors, particularly Evercore Group and Redsun Capital Limited. Furthermore, the passion to this profession appears to have urged him to return to the bank sector to devote his effort to lead Sacombank development.

In this process, besides preparing to meet necessary conditions for the restructuring effort, investors who are cooperating with Mr. Thanh acknowledge that in order for the restructuring to be a success, they have to obtain approval from by the State Bank of Vietnam and the government.

The investor group will first seek permission from the state bank and the government to access relevant data and review and evaluate Sacombank’s performance to have the accurate appraisal of its status after merging.

They will then prepare a detailed and accurate restructuring plan and suggest some specific mechanisms given by the state bank and government for the restructuring to be effective.

Specifically, Sacombank's financial capacity should be strengthened through an addition of US$905.3 million to the chartered capital to improve its operational performance.

The next step is to set up a debt settlement committee, focusing on solving bad debts and recovering mortgage, and using the available incomes to set up loan loss provisions.