Foreign investors have been waiting, with growing impatience, for Vietnam to make a colossal change: let them own majorities of the country’s hot but elusive listed firms. This month a slew of companies you might want to invest in – as proxies of the fast-growing Southeast Asian economy – are holding their first annual general meetings where it makes sense to discuss opening further to foreign funds. In June, after two years of on-again, off-again discussion, the government approved a decree allowing Vietnamese companies to go as high as 100% foreign, in principle. Says one investment research firm in Hanoi, “a lot of companies” will get approval at their early 2016 annual general meetings to extend foreign ownership limits.
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