Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam, or Vietcombank, received approval from Vietnam's State Securities Commission to sell a 3% stake to Singapore's GIC Pte. Ltd. and Japan's Mizuho Bank Ltd., Retail News Asia reported Jan. 8.

Under the planned private placement, GIC will acquire a 2.55% stake in Vietcombank, while Mizuho Bank will acquire the remaining 0.45% in order to maintain its current 15% stake in the Vietnamese lender. The deal could fetch around US$270 million for Vietcombank.

The planned sale is part of the Vietcombank's plan to eventually sell a 10% stake to the two foreign investors.

In December 2018, Stake Bank of Vietnam approved Vietcombank's proposal to increase its charter capital by selling a 10% stake to GIC and Mizuho Bank. This followed the central bank's approval in September 2018 for Vietcombank to raise its charter capital to 39.57 trillion dong from 35.98 trillion dong.

Mizuho Bank is a unit of Mizuho Financial Group Inc.

As of Jan. 7, US$1 was equivalent to 23,200 Vietnamese dong.