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Posted in: Securities Regulations
Decree 42/2015 is an entirely new decree governing “derivative securities” (chứng khoán phái sinh) and will take effect from July 2015. A quick read of Decree 42/2015 seems to indicate that Decree 42/2015 is intended to provide a legal framework for a regulated market for derivatives in Vietnam. In particular, Decree 42/2015 provides detailed requirements for:
The Securities Law 2006 requires any securities issued by a public company to be registered with the Vietnam Securities Depository Centre (VSD). The term “securities” includes, among other things, shares, bonds, warrants, options, future, and “investment contracts”. The registration at VSD is to record the ownership rights and other rights of the securities holders.
Option arrangements are used quite frequently in M&A transactions in Vietnam. Many foreign investors have used options or convertible securities as a mechanism to, among other things, acquire additional shares once the regulatory restriction is removed or to allocate commercial risks between the parties.
Generally speaking, an option arrangement should be valid for the following reasons:
Under Article 64 of the Commercial Law, options to purchase goods or options to buy goods are allowed to traded on a commodity exchange organized under the Commercial Law. In particular, call option or put option contract means an agreement whereby the option purchaser has the right to purchase or to be sold a certain type of goods at a pre-determined price (referred to as the contracted price) and must pay a certain amount of money for the purchase of this right (referred to as the option price). The option purchaser has the right to opt to carry out or not to carry out such purchase and sale of such goods.
However, the major difficulty relating to option arrangement is that exercising an option is not an automatic process. In Vietnam, after an option is exercised, the parties usually have to obtain necessary regulatory or corporate approvals so that shares can be issued or transferred to the relevant option holder. Therefore, cooperation of the counterparties is essential for successfully exercising an option arrangement. Certain option arrangements appear to have been successfully implemented with the cooperation of the parties involved.
Another difficulty is that although there is law which generally recognizes options arrangements, there are few detail implementation rules and regulations or court precedents. Therefore, it is difficult to anticipate how the authorities including the courts and other authorities view and enforce an option arrangement in practice.
The Government officially issued Decree 102/2026/NĐ-CP (Decree 102/2026), which introduces critical amendments and supplements to Decree 75/2019/NĐ-CP (Decree 75/2019) regarding administrative penalties for violations in the competition sector. Effective from 20 May 2026, Decree 102/2026 provides clearer enforcement guidelines and adjusts penalty frameworks, particularly for economic concentrations.
Below is a summary of the key changes introduced by Decree 102 that will directly affect M&A transactions subject to merger control (economic concentration notification) requirements in Vietnam.
In March 2026, Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance (MOF) released a draft decree (Draft Decree) implementing the Law on Personal Income Tax 2025 (PIT Law 2025) for public consultation. One proposal drew strong feedback from businesses and investors: a change to how individuals are taxed on the transfer of shares in non-public/unlisted joint-stock companies (JSCs). Following the consultation, the MOF now appears poised to step back from that change – welcome news for investors and companies engaged in M&A and private share transactions.
On 5 June 2026, the Government issued Decree 200 on private placement and trading of corporate bonds on domestic market and offering of corporate bonds on international market (Decree 200/2026). Decree 200/2026 will replace Decree 153/2020 on the same subject. In the past, Decree 153/2020 has been amended by Decree 65/2022 and Decree 8/2023. Decree 200/2026 introduces more conditions for private bond issuance.
5x debt/equity ratio
1.1. Decree 200/2026 reflects the 5x debt/equity requirement established under the 2025 amendment to the Enterprise Law. In particular, the debt of a bond issuer (including the value of the bonds to be issued) must not exceed 5 times of the equity of such issuer as recorded in the audited financial statements of the year preceding the issuance.
On 15 May 2026, the Government issued Resolution No. 66.17/2026/NQ-CP (the Resolution 66.17 or the new), slimming down the list of conditional business sectors currently set out in Appendix IV of Investment Law 2025 (the old).
Resolution 66.17 will take effect on 1 July 2026 and is set to expire on 28 February 2027, by which time the Government expects the National Assembly to formalise these adjustments through an amendment to Appendix IV. Although there would be a question about the effectiveness of the Resolution 66.17 over the Appendix 4 of Investment Law 2025 and how the investment authority will apply in practice, the investor may, in the meantime, treat the Resolution 66.17 as the working text for the next 9–10 months while following up on the law amendments.
Under Article 41 of the Law on Real Estate Business 2023 (Real Estate Business Law), a real estate project (Project) eligible for transfer may follow one of two sets of legal procedures, depending on how it was approved. While the difference may appear procedural at first glance, it has significant implications for when the transfer transaction is legally completed, and for what the parties can (or cannot) do if the transaction ultimately falls through. This post discusses the two procedures and the practical implications arising from the distinction between them.
Vietnam has temporarily raised several general economic concentration notification thresholds under Resolution No. 66.18 of the Government dated 18 May 2026 (Resolution 66/2026), a practical change for M&A transactions as fewer deals should be caught solely by Vietnamese assets, Vietnamese turnover or transaction value.
On 3 September 2025, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) released the Official Letter no. 13629 addressing questions related to difficulties and obstacles arising from legal regulations in the finance and investment sector. This correspondence has several notable issues that are summarized below. While some of the MOF’s guidance offers welcome flexibility and operational reassurance, others fall short of providing clear or comprehensive clarification, leaving important gaps unresolved and inconsistencies with other legislation unaddressed.
Current regulations regarding delegation/authorisation (both could be translated to/from "uỷ quyền" in Vietnamese) by the General Meeting of Shareholders (GMS) to the Board are unclear and conflicting. […]
A recurring issue in Vietnam corporate governance is whether a former member of the Board of Directors can be appointed as an “independent” Board member in the subsequent term, provided that all other statutory criteria are satisfied. This typically arises where companies want to retain a former board member while still complying with independence requirements under Article 155.2 of the Enterprises Law 2020 as amended in 2025 (Enterprises Law 2020).
Under Article 155.2(dd) of Enterprises Law 2020, an independent Board member must “not hold the position of member of the Board of the company within the last 05 years or longer unless he/she was designated in 02 consecutive terms.”
Vietnamese law currently lacks a formal definition of “latent defect” (khiếm khuyết ẩn) and a clear mechanism for allocating liability once such defects arise. This regulatory vacuum often leads to prolonged disputes between the Employer and the Contractor, particularly when the construction contracts do not include explicit risk allocation.
For the purpose of our discussion below, a “latent defect” is defined as a fault or flaw in construction works/item that is not discoverable through a reasonably thorough inspection at the time of handover.
At law, the following provisions suggest that existing shareholders of a Vietnamese shareholding company have pre-emptive rights over new shares issued by the company:
Under Article 79.1(c) of the Enterprise Law, an ordinary shareholder in a shareholding company has priority right to subscribe for new shares issued by the company in proportion to the shareholding of such shareholder in the company;
Article 87.2 of the Enterprise Law provides that when a shareholding company issues new ordinary shares and offers such shares to all ordinary shareholders, the company must send a written notice to each shareholder setting out the terms of the offer and a reasonable period for the shareholder to consider the offer. If there is any shareholder failing to subscribe for the shares offered to them, the Board of Directors (the Board) of the company is entitled to offer such shares to a third party on terms, which are not more favourable than the terms originally offered to the relevant shareholder; and
Article 87.2(c) of the Enterprise Law provides that a shareholder may transfer its pre-emptive right to other persons.
On the other hand, there are certain provisions, which indicate that there may be exemptions to the pre-emptive rights of existing shareholders under the Enterprise Law. In particular,
Article 87.6 of the Enterprise Law states that “the Government shall provide implementing regulations for private placement of shares”. One therefore may argue that in case of a private placement of shares, there is no pre-emptive right. This is consistent with the fact that the regulations on private placement of shares which involve issuance of new shares to third party investor do not specifically require each existing shareholder to waive their pre-emptive rights before the company can issue new shares to third party investors. In practice, it seems that the regulators do not take into account pre-emptive rights of existing shareholders if the new share issuance is approved by the shareholders meeting; and
The Ministry of Finance has issued a model charter applicable to public companies in Vietnam, which provides that new shares must be offered to existing shareholders proportionally “unless otherwise decided by the General Meeting of Shareholders” (Decision 121 of the MOF dated 26 July 2012). A resolution of the General Meeting of Shareholders of a public company (which adopts the model charter) to issue shares to a specific entity could therefore be interpreted as constituting an exception to the right to personal notice and waiver that is in the Enterprise Law.