A whole lot of sauceWHEN he left a job in banking to join a “company that sells fish sauce” in Vietnam, Michael Nguyen’s parents wondered if he was throwing away a lucrative career. Now a big cheese at Masan Group, one of the country’s largest listed companies, the Vietnamese-American seems happy with his gamble. Masan’s brands meet a big chunk of the local demand for pungent sauces, noodles and freeze-dried coffee—and in December the firm accepted a $1.1 billion investment from Singha, a Thai brewer, to help finance an assault on Vietnam’s frothy beer market.
Singha’s purchase of a 25% stake in Masan’s consumer-goods arm and 33% of its brewery capped a busy 12 months for mergers and acquisitions in the country. Their combined value in 2015 is reckoned to have been around $10 billion (see chart). Overall foreign direct investment into Vietnam began to pick up, after a slump following the financial crisis. More big deals are “percolating”, reckons Fred Burke of Baker & McKenzie, a law firm. This month All Nippon Airways of Japan said it would pay $108m for an 8.8% stake in Vietnam Airlines. The...Continue reading
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