Over the past few years, Vietnam has started to come into its own as one of Asia’s most dynamic private equity PE markets thanks to its companies’ willingness to embrace partnerships and desire for capital to keep pace with GDP growth and drive intra-sector consolidation.
Last year, deal volumes tripled to $3.1 billion according to the EY rankings. That put Vietnam in third place behind Singapore and Indonesia in Southeast Asia.
The key question, however, is whether this was a one-off, or the sign of a sustainable uptick in deal flows. In 2018, PE activity was very heavily concentrated in the same two leading conglomerates that have...