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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY
NGUYEN HUU HUAN
BANK RESTRUCTURING AND EFFICIENCY
THE CASE OF VIETNAM
DOCTORAL THESIS IN ECONOMICS
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Ho Chi Minh City – 2019
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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY
NGUYEN HUU HUAN
BANK RESTRUCTURING AND EFFICIENCY
THE CASE OF VIETNAM
Industry: Banking and Finance
Industry ID: 83.40.201
DOCTORAL THESIS IN ECONOMICS
Instructor: AsPro.Dr Tran Huy Hoang
AsPro.Dr Vo Xuan Vinh
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Ho Chi Minh City – 2019
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STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP
I’m hereby declare that this submission is my own work and except where
due reference is made; this thesis contains no material previously published or
written by another person(s).
This thesis does not contain material extracted in the whole or in part from
thesis or report presented for another degree of diploma in University of Economics
Ho Chi Minh city or in any other education institution.
Nguyen Huu Huan
July 2019
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TABLE OF CONTENT
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LIST OF TABLES
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 3.1. Result after the merger of the authorized capital………………………55
Figure 3.2. Result after banking consolidation and merger in 2015……………….57
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ABBREVIATION
2SLS: Twostage least squares
CBs: Commercial banks
DEA: Data Envelopment Analysis
DMU: Decision unit
ESS: Scaleefficiency hypothesis
ESX: Xefficiency hypothesis
GLS: Generalized least squares
IMF: International monetary fund
NPL: Non performing loan
OLS: Ordinary Least Square
QLH: Quietlife hypothesis
RMP: Relative market power
ROA: Return on asset
ROE: Return on Equity
RQ1: Research question 1
RQ2: Research question 2
SBV: State Bank of Vietnam
SCP: Structure, Conduct and Performance paradigm
SEFF: Scaleefficient hypothesis
SFA: Stochastic Frontier Analysis
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VAMC: Vietnam Asset Management Company
XEFF: XEfficiency
ABSTRACT
The link between bank restructuring and bank efficiency is an appealing area
that draws strong attention from both academic and industry practitioners. Vietnam
offers an interesting case to analyze this link however this issue remains
unexplored. This thesis investigates the association between bank restructuring and
bank efficiency in Vietnamese banking system. The thesis employ the Data
Envelopment Approach and Stochastic Frontier approach. Our data sample includes
26 commercial banks covering the period 19992015.
The finding indicates that the government’s restructuring policies in the first
stage did not benefit the banks implementing the restructuring methods. Regarding
to the effect of different restructuring methods, the privatization of stateowned
commercial banks, state intervention and mergers and acquisitions (M&As) do not
substantially improve efficiency. Besides, it is found that the bank efficiency
declines during the restructuring period not only because of the transition cost but
also due to the changes of other environment variables, such as financial crisis or
domestic economy slowdown.
The thesis contributes to the banking literature by examining the allocative
and technical efficiency of Vietnamese banking system in the recent period (2001
2015). It shows that decreasing the government's control of the banking system
makes the system more competitive. On the other hand, it makes domestic banks
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more vulnerable to competitive factors and effects of the world crisis. Through the
thesis, the indicated advantage results are keys to find better solutions for
restructuring the banking system. Furthermore, the rate of privatization also needs
to be considered to create the restructuring theory from the privatization of state
owned commercial banks. The thesis has relevant policy implications. Bank
restructuring is an important program for emerging countries to build a prudential
financial system. Evaluating the association between restructuring program and
bank efficiency is important to achieve a successful implementation of government
policy.
Key words: Restructuring, Bank efficiency, Integration, Financial crisis,
Economy
TÓM TẮT LUẬN ÁN
Mối quan hệ giữa tái cấu trúc ngân hàng và hiệu quả hoạt động của ngân
hàng luôn là mối quan tâm lớn của cả các nhà khoa học lẫn các doanh nghiệp và
các nhà làm chính sách. Chính vì thế, việc đánh giá mối quan hệ này và đo lường
tính hiệu quả của quá trình tái cấu trúc hệ thống Ngân hàng thương mại Việt
Nam trong thời gian qua là một yê cầu bức thiết.
Luận án nghiên cứu về mối quan hệ giữa các biện pháp tái cấu trúc hệ
thống NHTM và quá trình tái cấu trúc ngân hàng thương mại tác động đến hiệu
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quả hoạt động của các ngân hàng cũng như toàn bộ hệ thống NHTM ở Việt
Nam, một nền kinh tế mở nhỏ và đang trong quá trình chuyển đổi để hội nhập.
Luận án sử dụng các phương pháp DEA, SFA, Random effect, Fixed effect,
2SLS để nghiên cứu 26 NHTM Việt Nam trong khaong3 thời gian từ năm 1999
đến năm 2015. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, các biện pháp và quá trình tái cấu
trúc NHTM ở Việt Nam chưa thực sự mang lại hiệu quả, vì còn mang tính hình
thức và các biện pháp vẫn chưa quyết liệt.
Luận án đã bổ sung thêm vào lý thuyết tái cấu trúc NHTM ở các quốc gia
có nền kinh tế mở nhỏ, trong đó chỉ ra rằng các quốc gia có nền kinh tế mở, nhỏ
sẽ dễ bị tổn thương hơn trong quá trình tái cấu trúc, đồng thời việc lựa chọn thời
điểm tái cấu trúc để hội nhập cũng là một vấn đề cần phải được xem xét thận
trọng, vì nó có tác động lớn đến hiệu quả của việc tái cấu trúc. Tái cấu trúc ngân
hàng là một chương trình quan trọng để các nước mới nổi xây dựng một hệ
thống tài chính ổn định và bền vững. Do đó việc đánh giá sự liên kết giữa
chương trình tái cấu trúc và hiệu quả ngân hàng là rất quan trọng để đạt được
việc thực hiện thành công chính sách của chính phủ.
Từ khóa: Tái cấu trúc, Hiệu quả hoạt động ngân hàng, Hội nhập, Khủng
hoảng tài chính, Nền kinh tế
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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 OVERVIEW
Banking system is a crucial factor that controls capital flows in the economy and
contributes to promote economic and social development of the nation. In more than
sixty years of construction and development of four statecommercial banks, thirty
jointstock commercial banks, jointventure banks and banks with 100% foreign
capital, the banking system in Vietnam is gradually developing a perfect structure.
In 2006, Vietnam joined WTO and started to open the market economy.
Restructuring the banking system is a necessity in this time, stemming from the
economic situation and the demands of the people. However, under the impact of the
global financial crisis, Vietnam banking system soon faced with a number of risks and
challenges to the daily evaluation of bank performance, which has deteriorated over the
years as a consequence of profit slump, low credit growth, and rising bad debts.
Therefore, together with restructuring banking system to build a healthy economy, the
central bank and commercial banks have been implementing measures to restructure
the banking system to overcome these difficulties and improve the operational
efficiency of the entire system and individual banks because of the impacts of 2008
global financial crisis. With the aim of assessing the situation to restructure the banking
system in Vietnam in recent years, the subject is based on previous studies on the
restructuring the banking system of other countries. The content of the specific
research topic includes references of the previous studies on restructuring to build, to
choose the model and the proposed research methodology; analyse the situation of
Vietnam’s restructuring banking system through quantitative research models from
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which to propose recommendations and solutions to improve efficiency in the process
of restructuring the banking system on a sustainable and effective basis.
There is a close relationship between bank restructuring and efficiency. It is
proved through a number of researches in many economies in the world. With different
restructuring measures, the results of the linkage between bank restructuring and
efficiency may be positive or negative. The result depends on which kind of economy
that country has, the status of that economy and what problems that economy suffered.
A number of researches have proved that the association between bank restructuring
and efficiency is positive; For example, after the banking restructuring, the bank
efficiency in Turkey was significant improved (Zaim, 1995). Accordingly, privatization
is a good measure to increase banking efficiency; mergers and acquisitions also has
positive effect on cost and profit efficiency. However, some other researchers said that
the banking restructuring did not have any impact on the operating efficiency, it was
suggested to even contribute to its fall; For example, Elyasiani and Mehdian (1995)
indicated that the performance efficiency of the United States’ banks was unaffected
after the banking restructuring. Therefore, this thesis needs to research the linkage
between bank restructuring and efficiency to investigate whether this relationship in an
emerging economy like Vietnam’s is positive or negative.
This thesis focuses on studying the restructuring process of the Vietnamese
banking system from 2007 to 2015, and assessing different financial structure of the
system before and during the implementation stage of the restructuring process. More
specifically, it examines how the restructuring measures affect the performance of the
commercial banks and whether the process of restructuring in the sample period
increases the operational efficiency of the banks or not. It also explores the effect of
reform on Vietnam’s bank structure and performance. Besides, different structures of
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the banking system are investigated between pre (20012006) and during restructuring
period (20072015), the quietlife, efficient structure, market structure conduct and
performance hypothesis are tested to find the consequence.
1.2 MOTIVATIONS AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
This section highlights the current literature to identify potential gaps from
which the objectives and the research questions are raised. Accordingly, it is structured
into three sections: the method of bank restructuring (Section 1.2.1) and the structure
and performance relationship in the banking system (Section 1.2.2).
1.2.1
The method of bank restructuring
Restructuring program is established to solve problems of distressed banks
(McComb,
Gruben, & Welch , 2002
). There are four main restructuring methods
including merging domestic banks, giving permission to foreign bank entries, state
intervention and the privatization of stateowned commercial banks. Hawkin and
Turner (1999) showed that domestic merger was often the least costly way of
restructuring the banking system. Moreover, Berger et al (1999) indicated that mergers
helped to increase efficiency if greater diversification improved the risk – return trade
offs. Krishnasamy et al. (2004) studied production efficiency of Malaysia’s post
merger banks in 2000–2001 and discovered that technology was a crucialfactor for
increasing the productivity. Unite and Sullivan (2003) also said that in Asia, it was
easy for foreign banks to raise their presence and operate. Daniel (1997) showed
thatgovernments can improve banks’ ability effectively by several methods. For
instance, in Indonesia, the government created a recapitalization program where the
owners provided 20% of the capital shortfall (Fane and McLeod, 2002). In Korea, the
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government purchased nonperforming loans, subordinated debt, or subscribed to new
capital to assist private banks’ recapitalization efforts. Baer (1994) and Baer and Nazmi
(2000) pointed out that the inefficient operation of statecommercial banks accelerated
the process of recession in Brazil.
The studies presented above carried out the research about restructuring
methods in many countries with different economies.However, no study has examined
the influence of the bank restructuring methods on the restructuring process in a small
transitioning economy like Vietnam. This motivates the formation of Research
Question 1 (RQ1).
RQ1: How the restructuring measures such as the government intervention,
merger and acquisition of commercial banks and privatization of stateowned
commercial banks affect the performance of the commercial banks in the study
period in Vietnam?
1.2.2
The structure and performance relationship in the banking system
Chen, Skully and Brown (2005) studied banks in China and argued that large
stateowned banks and smaller banks operated more effectively than average banks.
Also, Fu and Heffernan (2009) reported that from 1985 to 2002, the Chinese banking
system followed the Quiet life hypothesis theory. Furthermore, the study of Berger and
Hannan (1997) about banks in the United States produced similar results to the studies
conducted in China by Fu and Heffernan (2009), providing evidence that banks were
also in compliance with the Quiet life hypothesis theory. The findings of Molyneux
and Forbes (1995) suggested that European banks followed traditional structures
(Structure conduct performance) while Goldberg and Rai (1996) argued that banks in
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high concentration countries followed the market power hypothesis and the Xefficient
hypothesis.
None of these studies, on another hand, use hypotheses to examine the effects of
the firststage reform on the bank structure and the performance, especially with a
particular economy like Vietnam. Thus, this thesis aims at discovering this
relationship. These research gaps motivate Research Question Two (RQ2), stated as
following:
RQ2: What are the effects of reform on Vietnam's commercial bank structure
and performance?
1.3 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
There have been a number of previous studies examining the restructuring of the
banking system, but no study has shown a return on a special economy similar to that
of Vietnam. Vietnam's economy is a mixed economy and has many economic
components. Although Vietnamese economy operates base on a market economy, it is
only recognized by the World Trade Organization as a lowlevel, transitioning
economy. In order to integrate into the regional and the world economy, the
development of monetary and banking market is taken for granted. The legal system in
this major is still complicated and has many limitations but it is gradually being
improved and simplified. It has been trying to promote the credit market banking, the
development of banks, and the diversification of banking products and services and the
reduction in bad debt. In order to achieve these objectives, the Statebank has adopted
many measures to improve and develop the banking system, including the restructuring
of Vietnamese banking system. Therefore, our research aims to discover how
positively the restructuring has affected the banking system in Vietnam. Specifically,
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this thesis wants to discover how it impacts on the banking performance and what the
effects of reform on Vietnam's commercial bank structure and performance are.
1.4 DATA AND METHODOLOGY
This section summarizes the data and methodology used to test the developed
hypotheses to help answering the two research questions and the empirical findings of
this thesis.
1.4.1
Data
The research data were collected from credible sources like Orbis Bank Focus
and IMF1. The first stage of data collection is to identify the source of the research
data, forms and the way to conduct investigations. Then raw data is collected after
being counted, synthesised, selected, edited, encoded and analysed, evaluated, and use
tables, graphs and so on to illustrate the content analysis. This will specify the nature of
the collected data to ensure the reliability for the research results.
1.4.2
Methodology
The thesis uses DEA2 and SFA3 methods to determine the performance of
commercial banks recently. Besides, the thesis used Random effect, ThreeStage DEA
1 International monetary fund
2Data envelopment analysis
3Stochastic Frontier Analysis
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to answer the previously mentioned research question. In order to examine the
hypotheses of RQ1, ThreeStage DEA was used with the consideration of the
environmental effects. Next, panel data was employed and, DEA, GLS 4 and OLS5
approaches were applied to estimate the equations in RQ2. According to Greene
(2003), using panel data would allow us to know the difference among behaviour,
individuals or time periods. Finally, a Hausman test was used to identify the optimal
model.
1.5 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS
The rest of the thesis is structured as following. Chapter 2 reviews the previous
literature on restructuring. This discussion helps to derive testable hypotheses related to
the two research questions. Next, Chapter 3 presents the banking case of Vietnam in
the study period. The sample data and methodology used to test the hypotheses related
to the three research questions are presented in Chapter 4. The empirical results for the
hypothesis testing of the three research questions are reported in Chapter 5. Finally,
Chapter 6 concludes the thesis.
4 General Least Squares
5 Ordinary Least Squares
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CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1 provided an outline of this thesis and identified its two research
questions. In Chapter 2, the literature review is presented. This chapter reviews the
academic literature related to these three thesis research questions and develops
hypotheses to test and answer them. Section 2.2 reviews the literature relating to
factors that impact the bank efficiency. The theoretical issues and literature pertaining
to bank restructuring and efficiency are discussed in Section 2.3. Next, Section 2.4
overviews the previous literature on method of bank restructuring. Finally, Section 2.5
summarizes these hypotheses and their corresponding research questions. In particular,
the research is based on the theory of structured finance bank (Waxman, 1998; Dziobek
and Ceyla, 1998).
2.2. BACKGROUND
2.2.1. Background knowledge about restructuring
The definition of restructuring commercialbanking system
Definition
Waxman (1998) show that restructuring the banking system only solved the
problems of one of the aforementioned components of the system or a bank which was
likely to go bankrupt, but the banking system still operated effectively. Generally
speaking, restructuring the banking system is the process of restructuring all the
components of the system, including: i) central banks; ii) commercial banking system;
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iii) banking systematic social policy and development banks and iv) a system of micro
credit organizations.
Pazarbasioglu and Dziobek (1997) supposed that restructuring the banking
system was to recover the solvency and the profitability, to increase the capacity of the
banking system and to improve the efficiency of the banking operation. In this
statement, the restructuring includes financial restructuring, restructuring activities and
corresponding safety monitoring with three goals. Alexander (1997) suggested that "A
restructuring program for a banking system typically includes a series of measures on
macroeconomics, effect of institutions and law. It has important implications for
macroeconomics, monetary policy, balance of payments, stability and development of
the macro economy; it shows the efficiency and transparency of public policy, and
future activities on the financial markets".
In conclusion, the restructuring of the banking system, which is a long process,
including a number of legal measures, financial institutions, is deployed step by step in
order to change and overcome structural weaknesses in the banking system structure to
put the system into reasonable and effective operation mechanisms, to increase the
labour and businesses, especially small and medium enterprises accessing probability
to banking services, to build a firm basis for healthy development of the banking
system and also the economy in particular. The subjects of the restructuring are banks
in all forms such as State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), commercial banks (CBs), domestic
invested banks and foreign invested banks.
Features of the restructuring of commercial banks
Restructuring commercialbanking system is different from restructuring of
other sectors like trade, services and telecommunications. The impact of restructuring
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of other majors is not widespread because the commercialbanking system does
business with special commodity and currency trading while the activities of
commercial banks are closely related to all other sectors of the economy and the
society in one country. According to some studies, restructuring commercial banks has
two characteristics:
Drastic restructuring in work: The activities’ influence of commercial banks spreads
widely and therefore a weak banking system will lead to the weakening of all other
fields. Eventually with just a banking collapse, the risk of bankruptcy of the whole
system is high and wide spread like the domino phenomenon. Therefore, restructuring
the banking system requires drastic and radical implementation.
Restructuring the national bank’s status: Since the banking system is closely related
to all economic areas, so restructuring banking system on its own will not be able to
achieve its objectives. Thus, restructuring banking system needs to ensure
participation, active cooperation and efficient management of various state agencies.
The causality of the restructuring
Kithinji, Mwangi and Ogutu (2017) supposed that the economy can only be
healthy if there was an existence of the support for a healthy banking system. In
another word, before the evolution of the global financial crisis and the intrinsic
difficulties of the economy, restructuring banking system is a needed job. If a banking
system in crisis entails risk of economic and social crisis or a major bank in crisis, it
would be in danger of spreading to the whole system. Then it would be difficult for the
economy of a country to develop a stable and healthy banking system with such
potentially unstable and inefficient operation.
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Restructuring the banking system is in demand when the current state of banks
faces with many structural problems in the banking activities which are ineffective and
even stagnant with weak capital, short of liquidity and asset quality deterioration on the
verge of disintegration and bankruptcy. These problems stem from the internal
weaknesses of the banking system. Nevertheless, there are some wrong structural
reasons such as unclear strategies and plans, inefficient management team work is,
unsuitable financial structure, lacks of necessary system’s risk control tools, weak
human resource management, ineffective coordination activities due to irrational
structure, or weak banking system. For such rapid growth, it is easy to overlook small
details when establish a bank and expand the branch network. In another word, when a
bank does not have enough resource to be trained to manage the administration, it is
easy to lead to fraud and loss of property, for instance, lack of transparency in financial
report such as concealing or carrying forward, not accounting properly credit provision
expenses and so on. So, the government needs to restructure banking system through
the restructuring of banks and financial institutions. Without screening and
restructuring soon, the service disruption of the mass credit system is likely to happen
and difficult to control.
Moreover, elements from the macroeconomic regulatory policies which are
inefficient and predict able may lead to misleading and loose regulation, which would
result in ineffective banking system. For example, when there is a fastgrowing
economy, if the government encourages the banks to increase credit without a
reasonable restraint policy, this would lead to lax bank lending which would result in
increasing NPL ratio and inefficient debt (NPL), and cause loss of liquidity to banks,
which can affect the entire system.
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The objective of the restructuring
According to Alexander (1997), because of the financial crisis, it is necessary to
implement a restructuring for banking system to recover its functions in order to
continue to supply banking services to the economy normally.
In order to do that, the necessary tasks are:
Maintaining the stability of the banking system to ensure the liquidity, the payments
and the operation of the banking system and the whole economy.
Finding solutions for problems in a timely manner to prevent them from spreading.
Restoring public financial intermediaries. This is the most basic goal of the
restructuring in order to ensure the stability with confidence towards the banking
system. When it is restructured, the liquidity of the entire system would be stable; the
level of bank credit would improve the confidence of all economic sectors for the
banking system.
Minimizing the cost of restructuring for the central bank, deposit insurance or
government. Along with the objective of strengthening the banking system,
restructuring also aims at reducing costs related to the central bank, the deposit
insurance or the government to bring the most efficient restructuring process.
Conditions for a successful restructuring
It is only really necessary when the activities of credit organizations deviate
from their basic functions in the economy or the arising problems become threatening
or there is a risk of system collapse.
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When carried out, the restructuring should be viewed under different angles,
established a clear set of criteria which answers appropriately why it is needed to
restructure, which aspects need restructuring, how the banks will operate after the
restructuring, whether the banks will handle bad loans and prudent deployed on a
voluntary principle with a roadmap and specific steps.
It must have an appropriate legal framework to allow the government to intervene in
the restructuring to ensure that the deposit insurance system has sufficient capital to
handle the crisis and can be used quickly and effectively. Beside liquidity issue, the
intervention process of the government will also raise a number of legal issues relating
to the existing shareholders due to corresponding laws that need to adjust. At the same
time, it is necessary to guarantee that the merger will guide the banks to better
development and does not interfere with the system. Daniel said that the government
can directly improve the recovery of banks by purchasing debts from weak banks.
This is a complicated process, so that the role of the central bank has to be
shown strongly and the intervention must be carried out quickly and in time (not an
important factor, related to the solution). The government must get a clear and
comprehensive process to monitor and evaluate the on going bad debt situation and
the loss of liquidity in the banking system and avoid the passive situation. The
supervisory staffs need to be trained, equipped with the right set of skills to implement
the law and management. The supervisory authorities must be able to have full access
to the accurate information, to ensure that the restructuring is effective, transparent
with timely adjustments.