Insights
In a private equity deal, the attention of the business is usually focused on the amount of money the fund will invest, the valuation of the business or the percentage of shares to be transferred. However, for the investment funds themselves, the most important question is often asked just before the conclusion of the transaction: how and when will the fund divest?
After more than two decades of development, Vietnam's stock market is entering an important period of reform. Decree 245/2025/ND-CP for the first time allows enterprises to register for listing at the same time as the initial public offering (IPO), instead of having to complete each procedure in the same order as before. At first glance, this change is just an administrative reform, but in fact it has a direct impact on the efficiency of capital mobilization of enterprises and the attractiveness of the entire market.
2026 can be considered one of the pivotal years of Vietnam's economy. While many economies around the world are still facing uncertainties from geopolitical conflicts, trade protectionism, prolonged high interest rates and global supply chain restructuring, Vietnam has entered a new stage of development with high growth ambitions far-reaching institutional reforms and the goal of becoming a high-income country by 2045.
There is a quite special feature of the aviation industry that many businesses in other fields do not encounter. Each flight transports not only passengers, but also "transports" a huge amount of personal data across borders. From the moment a passenger searches for a flight on the website, makes a booking, makes a payment, checks in online, uses facial recognition to board the plane, connects to in-flight Wi-Fi, earns reward points, requests special meals or provides medical assistance, almost the entire journey is recorded as data.
The announcement on its website by Nova Group Joint Stock Company (NovaGroup) on the list of individuals who are "not re-employed" has quickly become a topic of public interest . Notably, the published list is not the entire identifying information of individuals. Part of the citizen ID number and phone number have been concealed. This gives rise to a fairly common argument that the data has been "anonymized" or "de-identified", and therefore no longer falls under the scope of personal data protection legislation.
Artificial intelligence is turning data into a business's most important asset. The more data you can exploit, the more advantages businesses have in developing products, optimizing operations, and creating new business models. However, this process also puts businesses under increasing compliance pressure as regulations on personal data protection are continuously improved in Vietnam and around the world.
In 2018, the world's hospitality industry witnessed one of the largest data breaches in history when Marriott International announced that Starwood Hotels' booking system had been illegally accessed for a long time before it was discovered . According to published information, the data of hundreds of millions of customers globally has been affected. Not only does it include names, email addresses or phone numbers, but many of the compromised information also involves passports, stay histories, and other data that can reproduce almost the entire customer's travel journey over many years.
When booking a hotel room, most customers only think that they are providing a few basic information to complete the transaction. However, from the time of searching for a room on the online platform, making a reservation, check-in, using the service to check-out, a large amount of personal data has been collected, stored, analyzed and processed by the accommodation business.
For decades, investment deals and corporate acquisitions (M&A) have almost always followed a familiar formula. The buyer conducts financial due diligence to assess profitability, tax due diligence to identify potential financial obligations, and legal due diligence to review risks related to contracts, assets, labor and disputes. The results of these three processes are the basis for determining the value of the business as well as deciding whether to continue trading or not.
In most mergers and acquisitions (M&A), the most difficult negotiation usually lies not in the question of whether to buy or not, but in the question of how much to buy. For the seller, the value of the business lies not only in the existing assets or business results of today, but also in the growth potential for many years to come. In contrast, buyers are always cautious about untested expectations and are often only willing to pay for measurable values at the time of the transaction. It is the gap between these two perspectives that causes many M&A deals to last for months, even collapse just before signing, even though all parties are willing to cooperate.
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activities of projects are becoming an indispensable part of the investment market in Vietnam. In the real estate sector, many projects are transferred from one investor to another before being completed or put into operation. However, it is worth noting that the same business objective, transferring control of a project, can be done through various legal structures.
In most mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions, the buyer is usually the one taking the greater risk. After paying the purchase price and completing the transfer, the buyer can not only receive the assets or shares of the target enterprise, but also potential debts, undisclosed disputes, open tax obligations, labor issues, etc environment, business licenses, or even risks arising from data and technology. A deal that is attractively priced at the negotiating table can quickly become an underperforming investment if these risks appear after the transaction has been completed.
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