The news that Goldman Sachs is going to enter the market and that it has chosen Thien Viet Securities Company as the local partner has prompted investors hunt to purchase Thien Viet’s shares.

From January 30 to February 2, Thien Viet’s share prices increased continuously from VND35,000/share to VND60,000/share. On February 3, the successful transactions had the price of VND64,000/share.

Thien Viet’s shares have become more valuable as investors put high hopes on the cooperation between Thien Viet and the US-based financial group. Orders to purchase Thien Viet’s shares can be seen on several websites, while there is no offer for sale.

In January 2007, Chairman of Goldman Sachs came to Vietnam to survey the market, which is hoped to be followed by the plan to make direct investment in Vietnam.

There were no offers for selling or purchasing Mai Linh Taxi firm’s shares on any websites several weeks ago. However, the news that Mai Linh will list on the bourse in 2008 has list Mai Linh’s shares among the most wanted ones. If you open www.sanOTC.com, you will see several tens offers to purchase Mai Linh’s shares at the prices of between VND30,000 and VND36,000/share.

A lot of securities brokers gather in front of Mai Linh’s headquarter at No 370 Tran Khat Chan every day to ask the firm’s staffs if they sell shares. The firm is going to sell shares to its staffs at the preferential price levels of VND29,000, much lower than the levels on the OTC (over the counter) market. Meanwhile, the brokers said that they are ready to pay VND31,000/share, or they can buy the right to buy shares of the staffs.

A statistics by www.sanOTC.com showed that on February 4, 2007, Mai Linh’s shares were traded at VND33-35,000/share.

Meanwhile, the shares of commercial banks are also selling like hot cakes. The An Binh Bank is reportedly planning to issue shares to increase the chartered capital from VND1,130bil to VND1,500bil in March 2007, and the other share issuances will take place in September and November.

There is an information that attracts investors is that An Binh bank will sell 20% of its shares to foreign strategic shareholder. Sources said that An Binh’s shares are being transferred at VND750-760,000/share, a sharp increase compared to the VND600-680,000 level seen at the end of January 2007.

The prices of a lot of other banks’ share items also saw sharp increases. According to the OTC price quotation provided by the Saigon Securities Incorporated, the Military Bank’s shares were traded at VND9.1-9.3mil/share ($568) , while Eximbank’s shares at VND14-14.2mil ($875), Phuong Dong VND9.5-9.7mil ($593), and EAB VND21-22mil ($1,312).

Source: Lao dong