According to data from VIS Rating, in the third quarter of 2024, the total value of newly issued overdue bonds was VND 1.7 trillion. The cumulative overdue rate at the end of September 2024 decreased slightly compared to the previous month. About 62% of the cumulative overdue value came from the residential real estate group.
Regarding the handling of overdue corporate bonds, in September 2024, 10 overdue issuers in the fields of residential real estate, energy and construction returned a total of VND 781 billion in principal to bondholders. Of which, 70% of the refund value came from companies in the residential real estate sector, including Saigon Glory Company Limited (Saigon Glory) and Hai Phat Investment Joint Stock Company.
Saigon Glory repaid VND448 billion in principal to bondholders in September 2024. Since the beginning of the year, the issuer has repaid VND1,341 billion. After this payment, the company's outstanding bond principal is VND8,700 billion.
This project was previously owned by Bitexco Group LLC. After the construction of the basement in 2012-2013, the project stopped. By mid-2020, The Spirit of Saigon was restarted and the towers were built. This was also the time when Saigon Glory continuously raised capital through the bond channel. However, the construction was continuously delayed and the project continuously changed owners.
Most recently, on September 23, 2024, according to information published on the Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX), the representative of the Saigon Glory bondholders issued a document approving Bitexco Group's permission to transfer the secured assets to the transferee, a company headquartered in Hanoi. This transfer does not change the obligations of Saigon Glory Company Limited to the bondholders and the resolutions previously approved by the bondholders.
Also according to information from VIS Rating, in October 2024, the total value of bonds maturing will reach about 15.3 trillion VND. VIS Rating expects that among the bonds maturing in October 2024, there will be 8 bonds with a total outstanding face value of 420 billion VND at risk of late principal repayment, mainly from the residential real estate group.
Another issue that many experts are concerned about today is that the Vietnamese bond market is facing the risk of a sharp decline in liquidity if there is no timely mechanism to attract "shark" investors, because individual investors are about to be eliminated from the private bond game.
Most of the bonds issued and traded in the secondary market in recent times are privately issued bonds. However, the holders of private bonds are mainly individual investors, while institutional investors (insurance companies, pension funds and investment funds) only hold about 8% of outstanding corporate bonds.
However, in the Draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of 7 laws, including the Securities Law, which the Government submitted to the National Assembly for consideration and is expected to pass at the session taking place in October, there is a notable adjustment that will eliminate individual investors, only allowing institutional investors to buy and sell individual bonds.
Dr. Nguyen Duy Phuong, Investment Director of DG Capital, commented that there is a lot of room for institutional investors to expand in the Vietnamese corporate bond market. Currently, among the group of institutional investors, commercial banks and securities companies are the most active buyers, but the holding value is still small compared to the market size.
"To make the bond market in the coming time truly attractive, in addition to the mechanism to encourage investors, the most important point is that the quality of issuers must be improved. In addition, issuing enterprises need to be more public and transparent to create prestige with investors," Dr. Phuong stated his opinion.
