FIE mergers to rise as market opens: as international integration gathers pace, mergers and acquisitions in the foreign investment sector are going to become more and more common. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer attorney Harry Brunt looks at how this trend is developing in Vietnam. (Analysis)

Vietnam Investment Review, July, 2003 by Harry Brunt

SINCE the late 1990s there has been a significant increase in the number of corporate acquisitions and mergers in Vietnam involving foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs).

The Asian economic crisis of 1997 inevitably caused a number of investment projects to fail, particularly in the infrastructure sector, triggering numerous buyouts and acquisitions. However, the regional crisis also brought about changes in attitudes to investment, with a lesser focus on new investment projects and a greater emphasis on acquiring or restructuring existing businesses.

Changes in government policy since the late 1990s also increased the numbers of foreign investors seeking to buy out their local partners in joint-venture investments. Though positively encouraged during the...