Hanoi (VNA) – The State Bankof Vietnam has approved in principle a plan to merge the Sai Gon-HanoiCommercial Joint Stock Bank (SHB) and the Vinaconex-Viettel FinanceJSC (VVF).

SHB revealed that the central bank also ratifiedthe bank’s plan to set up a new subsidiary, which will be called SHB Financewith charter capital of 1 trillion VND (44.64 million USD) and will operate inconsumer credit.

Following the merger, SHB’s charter capital willincrease to more than 10.5 trillion VND.

SHB said under the Circular 6812/NHNN-TTGSNH,the central bank asked SHB and VVF to complete their merger in line with SBV’sregulations and submit a report on the merger to the SBV governor for officialapproval.

The planned merger was approved earlier by SHBand VVF shareholders at their annual general shareholders meetings last year.

SHB Finance will initially provide consumercredit services for individual customers that have annual income from 150 millionVND to 200 million VND, later easing the market share to other individualcustomers with lower income.

Once SHB Finance is established, SHB will alsotransfer all its lists of individual borrowers with annual income of less than 200million VND to SHB Finance.

According to SBV’s statistics, Vietnam had 16financial companies till the end of the last year.-VNA