Checkbooks Ready? Vietnam's Moving Fast

Five years is a long time in banking. The same Vietnamese lenders who were the pariahs of Southeast Asia in 2012 because of their bad-loan burden are now among the region's healthiest. With Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc saying he'll raise the foreign-ownership limit for banks from the current 30 percent, investors should get their checkbooks ready.

Singapore's sovereign wealth fund had a chance to get into the game early. In August, GIC Pte. agreed to buy a 7.7 percent stake in Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam JSC, a.k.a. Vietcombank, for less than $400 million, effectively valuing the lender at under $5.2 billion. The deal has yet to be concluded. Four months later, Vietcombank's market capitalization stands at $6 billion, and brokerage Ho Chi Minh City Securities Corp. is forecasting a 34 percent jump in pretax profit this year as provision expenses for bad loans drop by 25 percent.