On May 30, 2019 at the Island Shangri-la Hongkong, the Asialaw Regional Awards recognized the best national and regional law firms across the Asia Pacific region. VILAF was awarded the 2019 Vietnam Firm of the Year at the event. The Asialaw Regional Awards recognizes leading law firms across eight practice areas, seven industries and 25 jurisdictions in the region based on the annual submissions and research of Asialaw guide. The Firm of the Year award […]
This year’s annual office retreat found VILAFers in the midst of Seoul’s spring season. VILAFers enjoyed a reprieve from the above 30-degree weather of sunny Saigon to Seoul’s cool 20-degree — even dropping to 11 degrees in the evening. For 4 days, the group consisting of VILAFers and their families delighted on South Korea’s history, culture, modernity, and landscape. The tour started with the group drinking up the beauty of the Cherry Blossoms at Yeouido […]
MARKET OVERVIEW
The Vietnamese market has been a dynamic M&A environment. We have also seen that inbound M&A activity is increasing in both deal volumes and deal values faster than domestic M&A. According to public data, by dollar value, inbound M&A occupied more than 75% of total deal value in 2017 and the first half of 2018. Inbound megadeals explain this shift in the balance, for example the investment by the Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC in Vinhomes alone was $1.3 billion, while Warburg Pincus’s investment in Techcombank was $370 million. Real estate and financial services M&A activity has been most prominent in 2018.
In the largest promotion in the firm’s history, VILAF is pleased to announce the naming of 4 counsels as new partners and 1 senior associate as new counsel effective 1 January 2019. VILAF has become the business law firm with the largest number of partners in Vietnam and has expertise knowledge and experiences in a wide variety of legal areas.
The new partners come from both Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi offices and have been practising law with VILAF for around 10 years.
Project financing in Vietnam has thus far focused on the energy and infrastructure sectors. Major power projects have generally been implemented on a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis, as the BOT legal scheme in Vietnam is more developed than other forms of investment, such as Build-Transfer-Operate (BTO) or Build-Transfer (BT), etc.