Life Expectancy Up 9 Years, Pensions Have Not Caught Up
Vietnamese people are living nearly 9 years longer, but that extra time falls into retirement, not the working years. While over 70% of pensioners receive only VND 3-10 million a month, the pension reform proposal is still six months away from reaching the country's top decision-making body.
SCEX's real hurdle isn't capital, it's institutional owners
SCEX just raised its charter capital to VND 5,000 billion, half the VND 10,000 billion floor required for Vietnam's crypto exchange pilot. But the hardest part of Article 8 isn't the number, it's finding enough qualified financial institutions willing to put their name on the stake.
HDBank's 9.2% Bond: Fixed for One Year, Then a Formula
HDBank is offering VND 20,000 billion in public bonds at a headline 9.2% rate for year one. From year two, buyers trade deposit insurance for a spread capped at 3.3 points over Big 4 savings rates.
Formosa halts a blast furnace for 48 hours, steel stocks barely move
Formosa Ha Tinh shut down a blast furnace after an equipment fire on the morning of September 4, but steel stocks showed almost no reaction all session. The data explains why the market got the pricing right, and which date actually matters next.
Draft rule lifts credit cap to 52%, risk stays put
Vietnam's Law on Credit Institutions is tightening the single-borrower credit cap toward 15% of a bank's own capital, even as a draft Circular proposes a separate lane up to 52% for Hanoi's mega-projects. Concentration risk doesn't disappear; it's just allowed to grow.
VN-Index up 1.08%, yet 177 HOSE stocks fell
In the September 4 morning session, VN-Index gained more than 19 points while decliners still outnumbered advancers on HOSE. The two numbers measure different things, and understanding how VN-Index is calculated helps you read the board correctly.
VNX Puts a Spotlight on 15 Minutes of Trading on Sept 18
VNX has issued tightened surveillance rules for FTSE Russell rebalancing periods, carving out a dedicated watch group for the closing auction on September 18, three days before the upgrade officially takes effect.
GPT-6 Astra: Top Risk Rating, OpenAI Guards Its Own Door
OpenAI rated its newest model at the highest cyber risk tier in its own internal framework, then shipped it two days later. The only barrier between that capability and the outside world is a vetting process the company runs itself.
PNJ Posts Record Loss of VND 283bn, Revenue Still Up 12%
PNJ swung to a net loss of nearly VND 283 billion in Q2 2026, its deepest quarterly loss since listing in 2009. The cause was an VND 865 billion provision for a diamond buyback wave, not weaker sales. Three upcoming checkpoints will decide how much risk remains.
Bank Bonds at 10%, Bông Sen at 10.5%: Two Outcomes
At nearly the same coupon rate around 10% a year, a Sacombank bond just started trading while a Bông Sen bond is still sitting on VND 3,009 billion in unpaid interest. The headline rate is not the risk signal investors think it is.
PVFCCo hits 192% of plan: real growth is 116%
PVFCCo (DPM) says it has hit 192% of its full-year profit plan in just six months, but that plan was set 37% below the prior year's result when shareholders approved it. Real growth is 116.1%, driven by a urea price cycle the company doesn't control.
Vietnam PMI Hits 53.3, But Export Orders Reverse
Vietnam's manufacturing PMI climbed to 53.3 in August, the strongest improvement since February. But new export orders and employment both turned negative, with domestic demand and factory efficiency picking up the slack.