Trailblazing entrepreneurs born in Tiger Year

Doan Nguyen Duc – Chairman of Hoang Anh Gia Lai

Whether Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) was a small carpentry workshop or is the big company with a market capitalization of a billion dollars as it is now, its chairman, Doan Nguyen Duc, sticks to his non-flashy style of casual shirts and light-colored jeans.

After HAGL listed its shares on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange in 2008, he was consistently among the five richest people in the market. In 2011 he was even rated one of the 30 most powerful businesspeople in Southeast Asia by U.S. publication Wall Street Journal.

Real estate used to be the goose that laid the golden eggs for HAGL in 2006-08, with the firm investing not only in Vietnam but also Myanmar.

At his peak, in late 2012, Duc suddenly pulled out of from real estate and focused on agriculture in Laos and Cambodia. But his firm bled for many years, accumulating losses of VND36 trillion (US$1.56 billion).

In 2021 Duc manage to turn HAGL around by growing bananas and farming pigs, reducing its debts to around VND10 trillion. It will clear all its debts in the next one to two years, he has said.

It targets revenues of VND4.82 trillion this year, and profits of VND1.12 trillion.

Duc has made great contributions to Vietnamese football over the last two decades.

Do Quang Hien – Chairman of SHB and T&T Group

Like Duc, Do Quang Hien, is also popular among Vietnamese football fans.

As a student, he studied radio physics, wishing to become a scientist, but business seems to have been his destiny.

Like Duc, he too was sometimes over his head in debts during the 28 years he developed T&T Group.

Hien became chairman of private bank SHB later. In 2016, SHB took over Habubank in 2016, the first voluntary merger in the banking industry.

Under his leadership, SHB has climbed the ranks to become one of the top 10 private banks in terms of profits, which topped VND6 trillion last year.

Nguyen Duc Huong – former Chairman of LienVietPostBank

Nguyen Duc Huong facilitated the establishment and development of private lender LienVietPostBank.

In 2014 LienVietPostBank and Him Lam Corporation invested in farming macadamia on a large scale for the first time in Vietnam, and Huong became vice chairman of the Vietnam Macadamia Association.

In 2017 he became chairman of LienVietPostBank and quickly listed its shares on the stock market. One year later he resigned, citing health reasons.

He recently joined the board of directors of CMVietNam, which specializes in job recruitment and civil engineering.

Ha Thi Thu Thanh – Chairwoman of Deloitte Vietnam

Ha Thi Thu Thanh has made enormous contributions to Vietnam’s independent audit industry right from the early days of the accounting reform campaign in the 1980s.

She is the chairwoman and one of the founders of Deloitte Vietnam. She used to be an official in the Ministry of Finance before being working for the Vietnam Auditing Company, the first independent auditing company in Vietnam.

She is renowned for her expertise in consulting, corporate governance and sustainable development.

Nguyen Duy Hung – Chairman of SSI, Pangroup

Nguyen Duy Hung was born in a poor family to teachers. He studied in Eastern Europe and become a scientist for a state agency.

But Hung realized he was more suited to do business. He founded PAN Pacific and used to be a well-known consultant for foreign investors. In this capacity he clinched two big deals: the Metropole Hotel and the Hoa Binh automobile factory.

In 1999 he went to Thailand to study investment and returned home to establish SSI Securities Corporation with registered capital of $420,000 when the stock exchange was set up.

SSI is now the largest securities firm with charter capital of over VND9.847 trillion, which it is planning to increase to VND15 trillion.