December 6, 2019 by Vietnam Weekly
Business news isn't my strongest suit, but this is an important story. VinCommerce and VinEco, the retail and agricultural arms of Vingroup, will merge with Masan Group, one of Vietnam's largest food and beverage producers and distributors (they make popular fish sauce, instant noodle, and bottled drink brands, among others).
VinCommerce owns the VinMart and VinMart+ supermarket and convenience store chains, which have exploded in numbers this year. The company bought Fivimart and Shop&Go, two small convenience store brands, earlier this year, and aimed to open nearly 10,000 stores in all 63 provinces by 2025. (It also owns Adayroi, an e-commerce site.)
According to Bloomberg, Masan will control the company created by the merger (which hasn't been named yet), while Vingroup's shares in VinCommerce and VinEco (which operates a number of farms) will be converted into shares in the new entity. This will become the largest retailer in Vietnam.
Vingroup has said it carried out the merger so that it can focus on industry and technology, which it clearly wants to move further into as it transitions away from the traditional markets of real estate and retail. VinFast (cars and motorbikes) and VinSmart (smartphones, TVs, 5G tech and more) have required huge investments from the parent conglomerate, and offloading VinCommerce and VinEco will presumably free up funding.
It remains unclear what this merger will look like on the street level, as VinMarts have become a ubiquitous sight in cities. They also host battery exchange stations for VinFast's electric motorbikes, so what will happen with those?
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