Doan Nguyen Duc, owner of Vietnam's first private jet,
plans to start trading shares in his Hoang Anh Gia Lai Joint Stock Co.
venture on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange next month to boost trading.
Hoang Anh Gia Lai will trade 179.8 million shares on
Vietnam's major stock exchange in HCMC, the bourse said in a statement
posted on its website.


The company plans to press ahead with the listing even
after a 60 percent slump in the benchmark VN-Index this year, Duc said
in a telephone interview.


“We're not very much concerned about the downturn in
Vietnam's stock market because attracting capital is not our priority
right now,” Duc said. “We want to create better trading opportunities
for existing shareholders.”


Duc, who owns 55 percent of Hoang Anh and is its
chairman, in May paid US$7 million for a Beechcraft King Air 350 plane.
In 1993 he founded Hoang Anh Gia Lai, based in Gia Lai province in the
central highlands, as a furniture maker before building up the business
to include mining, energy and property.


Pretax profit this year would probably be about VND1
trillion ($58.8 million), less than half the VND2.5 trillion targeted,
because of a drop in real-estate activity, said Vo Truong Son, Gia
Lai-based Deputy General Director.


The company has 30,000 hectares (74,131 acres) of
rubber trees and is building two hydroelectric plants, Duc said. Within
five years the company plans to reduce its holdings of property assets,
he said.


Hoang Anh last traded at VND52,000 in the informal
market, known as over-the-counter market, according to data from
Habubank Securities. In Vietnam, companies typically sell shares before
listing them on a public exchange.