Investors eye land when buying SOE shares: expert
Investors eye land when buying SOE shares: expert
Many strategic investors have bought into State-owned enterprises (SOEs) because of land which those SOEs have, instead of their brands or business sectors, said economic expert Ngo Tri Long.
This is why it is essential to thoroughly review strategic investors taking part in equitization or divestment activities at SOEs, Long said.
By checking investors’ development histories and business models, government agencies can determine whether they will work with SOEs over the long term and protect domestic brands, the former director of the Ministry of Finance's Price Market Research Institute was quoted by Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper as saying at a forum on the restructuring of SOEs, held on August 8.
One of the top goals of SOE equitization is to ensure as many benefits as possible for the Government and not to cause losses for the State budget, and the participation of foreign investors in the equitization of SOEs will bring advantages for the State, not only drawbacks, as many people fear, he said.
Many have said that SOEs will likely lose their brands when they undergo equitization with foreign investors, he added.
He cited Vietnam Feature Film Studio as an example of a typical failure in selecting a local investor for equitization, noting that many shortcomings were reported in this equitization process when the 60-year-old studio was handed over to Waterway Transport Joint Stock Corporation, which had no experience in movie production.
