Royal International Corp had applied to sell 8 million shares

Taiwan-backed Vietnam casino delays IPO to August

(Vietnam).- The Taiwan-backed operator of Vietnam’;s biggest casino said on Thursday it had delayed its initial public offering to next month due to procedural problems in its application to list on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange.
2007-07-23
Reading time 50 seg

Royal International Corp, which runs the casino in Halong Bay, had applied to sell 8 million shares, or about 23 percent of the company, on the exchange on July 20 to raise about us$ 100 million for expansion.

"We had some problems with the listing paperwork, but that has been resolved now and we should receive our IPO and listing licence early next week," Tran Trong Nghia, head of the equity department, told Reuters. "The new schedule for the IPO and listing should be the first week of August," Nghia added.

The firm has said it expected the shares to sell for about us$ 12.4 each in the IPO, or 20 times their face value of us$ 0.61.

The company, which also operates 130 luxury villas in the UNESCO-Heritage Halong Bay, has contracts with US hotel operator Starwood Hotels & Resorts to manage two newly built hotels in Halong City.

Vietnam is encouraging investors to build high-end hotels, resorts and golf courses to help sustain a boom in tourism, particularly from South Korea and China. Foreign investment in the tourism sector has reached around us$ 700 million so far this year, mostly in hotels and golf courses. Casinos in Vietnam are allowed to cater only to foreign tourists as gambling is banned.

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