Mr. Pham Nhat Vuong becomes the first USD billionaire of Vietnam
According to the 2013 world billionaires ranking just announced by Forbes magazine, businessman Pham Nhat Vuong, owner of Vingroup, has become the first representative of Vietnam to appear on this list.
According to this ranking, Mr. Pham Nhat Vuong is ranked 974th out of 1,426 billionaires in the world. His total assets are estimated by Forbes at about 1.5 billion USD, equivalent to nearly 31,500 billion VND.
This is the 27th year that the prestigious American magazine has published a ranking of the world's billionaires. The subjects ranked by Forbes are only individuals and do not include families with multiple generations sharing the same fortune.
The assets listed include each billionaire's stake in public and private companies, real estate, yachts, art, cash and debt. Forbes collected the figures from the people listed or from experts in various fields in cases where the individual declined to disclose them.
According to this magazine, the majority of Mr. Vuong's $1.5 billion fortune comes from the shares he holds in Vingroup Corporation at a rate of 53% (both directly and indirectly).
This businessman was born in the year of Mau Than (1968). After the war ended, Mr. Vuong’s entire family once relied solely on his mother’s beverage shop. “My dream at that time was not big. I just wanted to help my family,” Forbes magazine quoted the chairman of Vingroup’s board of directors as saying.
Being good at math and winning a scholarship to study abroad in Russia, in 1993, when he graduated from university, the Soviet Union collapsed. After deciding to marry his classmate, Mr. Vuong stayed abroad to seek post-Soviet opportunities in Ukraine.
With the capital equivalent to 10,000 USD raised from family and friends, Mr. Vuong opened a Vietnamese restaurant here before opening an instant noodle factory. At that time, Ukrainians were very poor and instant noodles were very new to them.
Therefore, Mr. Vuong boldly borrowed money at an interest rate of 8%/month to open a large factory instead of just running a small shop. To attract customers, he produced and gave away many free packages of noodles to locals along with Vietnamese calendars. And since then, he quickly attracted customers. By 2010, he decided to sell the factory to Nestle for about 150 million USD.
With the profits earned from doing business in Ukraine, around 2000 he returned home to invest in building the Vinpearl resort in Nha Trang and then the Vincom shopping center in Hanoi.
(According to Dan Tri) - MD
