Vilaf and Clifford Chance have advised Vietnam’s Vingroup Joint Stock Company on its $200 million U.S. dollar high-yield bond issuance, the first offshore public bond from a privately owned Vietnamese company, as well as the first from a Vietnamese real estate operator.
YKVN Lawyers advised the joint lead managers on Vietnamese law, with Shearman & Sterling advising on U.S. law. Credit Suisse was the sole global coordinator for the notes, which were offered under Rule 144A and Regulation S. Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and ING were the joint bookrunners.
The Clifford Chance team was led by Crawford Brickley, the firm’s head of Capital Markets, Asia Pacific, and he was assisted by partner Jon Zonis, among others.
Vingroup, the largest real estate, tourism, hospitality development and management company on the Ho Chi Minh exchange, has twice issued convertible bonds in the past three years. In May, private equity firm Warburg Pincus led a consortium that invested as much as $325 million in Vingroup, with $200 million of that earmarked for a 20 percent stake in the company’s Vincom Retail property division.
All this activity is part of Vingroup’s stated mission to create international name recognition ahead of its planned initial public offering in Singapore, which could happen before the end of the year.
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