Vietnam's Military Bank Completes Mandatory Acquisition of OceanBank in State-Directed Cleanup

Vietnam's Military Bank, known as MB, has completed the mandatory acquisition of OceanBank following a transfer directed by the State Bank of Vietnam as part of the country's banking sector cleanup. The handover, completed in October 2024, follows the SBV's 2015 decision to acquire a group of financially troubled lenders at zero dong.

The mandatory transfer of OceanBank to MB mirrors a parallel transaction completed around the same time, in which CBBank was transferred to Vietcombank under the same state-directed framework.

ORIGINS IN THE 2015 ZERO-DONG BANK INTERVENTIONS

OceanBank was among a small group of Vietnamese commercial banks that were acquired by the State Bank of Vietnam in 2015 at a nominal price of zero dong, a legal mechanism available under Vietnamese banking law when a credit institution is deemed unable to meet its obligations and poses a systemic risk. The zero-dong acquisition wiped out existing shareholders while keeping the bank operational under SBV control.

OceanBank then operated under SBV control for nearly a decade.

REMAINING TRANSFERS

With the OceanBank and CBBank transfers completed, GPBank, the third zero-dong bank, and DongA Bank, which was under special control but was not a zero-dong bank, were still to be transferred.