ANZ wins Vietnam licence to open fully owned bank

HANOI, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ.AX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) has won a licence to open a fully owned bank in Vietnam, the central bank said, becoming the third foreign wholly owned bank to operate in the Southeast Asian country.

ANZ Bank Vietnam Ltd will be capitalised at 1 trillion dong ($60.5 million), with its headquarters in Hanoi, the State Bank of Vietnam said in a statement.

The licence for ANZ, which already has branches in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and a nationwide automatic teller machine network, is the third issued in a month after similar permits for HSBC (HSBA.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) (0005.HK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Standard Chartered Plc (STAN.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

The new entity of ANZ, which owns 10 percent in Sacombank STB.HM, one of Vietnam's only two listed banks, would expand banking activities to tap a large market in the country of 86.5 million people, only 10 percent of them have bank accounts.

ANZ, which has been in Vietnam for 14 years and is one of nearly 40 foreign banks in the country, would compete with HSBC (HSBA.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Standard Chartered (STAN.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and also four state-run banks, including the country's top lender Agribank.

Vietnam also has 37 partly private banks, more than half of them are small with total assets of less than $1 billion each.

The country's bank loans in the first nine months of this year rose 18.03 percent from the same period in 2007, slowing from an annual growth of 30 percent in the same period in 2007, the central bank said on Friday.

It aims to curb banks' credit growth at 30 percent for the whole of 2008 to fight double-digit inflation, after lending surged 54 percent last year. ($1=16,519 dong) (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; Editing by Kim Coghill)