In the trading sessions before the Lunar New Year holiday, the stock market became even more gloomy, liquidity was difficult, and cash flow disappeared, causing stock prices to fluctuate. The VN-Index remained around the 1,200-point mark, which it had reached since 2007.

Many stocks increased sharply and then decreased sharply, fluctuated abnormally, along with shocks of delisting/sinking... such as the "FLC family", "APEC group", "Louis family", "Song Da family" stocks... making many people afraid.

When speculative money flows out of the market, the stock prices of good/bad, large/small businesses all decline. This is also an opportunity for long-term investors, including many big/billionaires from Thailand, Japan, etc., to increase their ownership in important manufacturing businesses to establish their position in the market of 100 million people.

Foreign giants are ready to take over

According to Vietnam Dairy Products Joint Stock Company - Vinamilk (VNM), the major foreign shareholder F&N Diary Investments Pte.Ltd has just registered to buy nearly 20.9 million VNM shares for investment purposes. The transaction is expected to take place from January 17 to February 14 by negotiation and order matching.

With the current price of VND61,900/share, it is estimated that F&N Diary Investments Pte.Ltd may have to spend VND1,300 billion to own more Vinamilk shares.

F&N Diary Investments currently holds nearly 370 million VNM shares, equivalent to 17.69% of Vinamilk shares. If the purchase is successful, it will increase its ownership ratio to 18.69% of shares.

F&N Dairy Investments is a Singaporean company with two Singaporean representatives on Vinamilk's board of directors. However, it is an organization related to Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, chairman of TCC Group. In 2013, TCC bought Fraser & Neave - the parent company of F&N Dairy Investment.

Over the years, F&N Diary Investments has repeatedly registered to buy - not buy - then register to buy VNM shares. But in general, the trend is to increase the proportion of holdings in the leading enterprise in the Vietnamese dairy industry. The amount of shares held by Thais in VNM is currently worth about 1 billion USD.

Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi became famous in 2017 for the deal in which Thai Beverage spent 5 billion USD to buy more than 340 million shares, thereby gaining control of Vietnam's largest beer company - Sabeco (SAB).

In the plastics industry, Thailand's SCG Group has become a major shareholder of Binh Minh Plastics (BMP) - the leading enterprise in Vietnam's plastics industry since early 2012. Since then, SCG has continuously acquired and officially successfully acquired BMP in early 2018.

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Thai and Japanese capital is pouring into Vietnam through both FDI and corporate share purchases. Photo: Nam Khanh

More than a decade of shopping, taking over important Vietnamese enterprises

Over the past decade, many large Vietnamese enterprises in key industries have been targeted and acquired by many Thai corporations such as: Vinamilk, BPM, Ngoc Nghia Plastics, Bien Hoa Packaging, Prime Group Ceramic Tiles, Nguyen Kim, MM Mega Market, Lan Chi, Home Credit, SHBFinance...

Many Japanese corporations have also held large shares in a series of leading Vietnamese enterprises such as: Ha Tay Pharmaceutical (DHT), Hau Giang Pharmaceutical (DHG), Bao Viet Group (BVH), VPBank, FE Credit, VietinBank (CTG), Vietcombank (VCB), SSI Securities, TPBank, FPTS Securities, Petrolimex (PLX)... Recently, a Japanese giant is said to have invested in buying shares of Vingroup's Vu Yen real estate project in Hai Phong.

It can be seen that large corporations from Japan and Thailand have implemented a quite similar strategy of gradually pouring money into acquiring leading enterprises in important industries in Vietnam.

Attractive destinations for Thais and Japanese are banking and finance, industrial parks, oil and gas, retail, fast-moving consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, plastics, packaging, etc.

In many of these deals, Japanese and Thai corporations have seen their stock prices skyrocket, such as many banking stocks (VCB, CTG, TPB...), or plastic stocks like BMP, pharmaceuticals...

In 2024, Thai giant SCG saw BMP plastic stock peak dozens of times. Since the beginning of 2020, BMP stock has increased about 6 times and is currently at a historical high of 130-140,000 VND/share.

Not only making big profits from shares, Thailand's SCG also made a fortune thanks to BMP's regular annual dividends, some years up to 126%, thereby pocketing thousands of billions of dong from this "golden goose".

Japanese and Thai giants also benefited greatly from banking stocks when prices increased sharply. In addition, there were immeasurable benefits from acquiring retail brands such as: Big C (GO), MM Mega Market, Nguyen Kim, Lan Chi...

The most "stormy" case is probably the Sabeco deal, when the Thai people invested 5 billion USD to buy a large stake of nearly 54% of shares in the context of SAB's stock price declining for many years. However, Sabeco's business is still very good and has plenty of cash, paying regular dividends to TCC Group. Sabeco is still the leading beer brand in the domestic market and regularly "prints money" for the Thai people. To date, Thaibev has earned more than 12,000 billion VND in dividends from Sabeco.

Above all, Sabeco is helping the Thai TCC Group dominate the Vietnamese beer market, thereby establishing a solid position in the Southeast Asian region.

Acquiring a series of Vietnamese giants, billions of dollars in profits fall into the hands of Thai tycoons . Over the past 10 years, Thai corporations have spent a lot of money and now control a series of leading enterprises in Vietnam. This trend has not stopped when many domestic enterprises are facing unprecedented difficulties and challenges.