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.

In practice, except for shares of listed public companies, very few public companies register their issued securities with the VSD and the authorities seem to accept this practice. Now, under new Circular 5/2015 of the Ministry of Finance, a public company must register its securities with the VSD when it registers its public company status with the State Securities Commission (SSC). This requirement appears to indicate an intention of the SSC to start enforcing the long-ignored requirement under Securities Law 2006.