PICTURED: YEN DUONG/BLOOMBERG
In Europe, both the brand and the owner of the car manufacturer are hardly known. But that could change soon. Vinfast made a brilliant debut on the US stock exchange Nasdaq on Tuesday. The share price has meanwhile risen to $37.06, which equated to a market value of $85 billion. Vinfast was worth more at entry than General Motors (46 billion) and Ford (48 billion). However, only a relatively small number of Vinfast shares are traded, so there can be large price movements quickly.
The Vinfast owner is a man with an eventful life story: Pham Nhat Vuong, according to the Forbes ranking list, the richest Vietnamese and the fifth richest Asian. The mother sold tea, the father fought in the Vietnamese People’s Army. The now 55-year-old studied first in Hanoi and later in Moscow at the Institute of Geology. He sold Technocom, a specialist in ready meals, to Nestle in 2009 for $150 million.
After his return to Vietnam, the father of three, who is married to his childhood sweetheart Pham Thu Huong, broadened his business: Today, under the umbrella of the conglomerate Vingroup, there are not only Vinfast (which also produces e-motorcycles), but also luxury resorts, a online trading platform and a supermarket operator. Vingroup’s subsidiaries are active in the real estate business, build hospitals, run schools and research sustainable agriculture. “I don’t care how much money I make. I want to create things that make life beautiful,” says Pham Nhat Vuong, whose fortune was recently valued at $8 billion by Forbes. His interests are wide-ranging: he had a center for contemporary art built in Hanoi. And he relaxes with football and thinks about the youngsters: He sponsors PVF, a center for young football talents.
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