Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group and Vietnam's BIDV Securities (BSC) signed a joint-venture agreement in Tokyo on August 25, 2026, laying the groundwork for a new asset management company in Vietnam called BSC Amova Asset Management. The deal was struck between BSC, the brokerage arm of state-owned Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV), and Amova Asset Management, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust's fund-management subsidiary. Formation of the new entity still requires regulatory approval and licensing from Vietnamese authorities.
Deal structure and early targets
Under the plan reported ahead of the signing, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust would hold 49% of the venture, with BIDV retaining the majority 51% stake. The new company is expected to offer investment funds and manage client money, with its portfolios confined to domestic Vietnamese assets under current local rules governing foreign-linked asset managers. Sumitomo Mitsui Trust has set an early-phase target of roughly $1.9 billion in assets under management, banking on BIDV's existing retail and corporate customer network to build scale faster than a standalone market entry would allow.
That network is sizeable by Vietnamese standards. BIDV is one of the country's largest state-owned commercial banks, and BSC has operated as a licensed securities firm in the local market for years — giving the venture a distribution channel that a foreign entrant negotiating market access on its own would otherwise have to build from scratch. Vietnam limits the scope of what foreign-backed asset managers can hold in client portfolios, a restriction that shaped the JV's domestic-assets-only mandate from the outset.
A partnership dating to 2013
The agreement extends a relationship between the two institutions that goes back more than a decade. BIDV and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust first established ties in 2013, and the two later formed BIDV-SuMi Trust Leasing (BSL) in 2017, a joint venture focused on equipment and asset leasing rather than fund management. The new asset-management tie-up marks the first extension of that cooperation into wealth and investment products, an area where BIDV had not previously partnered with a foreign institution at this scale.
Amova itself is a relatively new name in the market despite a long operating history. The firm was renamed from Nikko Asset Management in September 2025 following its integration into Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group's asset-management structure. Under either name, the business traces more than 65 years of history in Japan and reported total group assets under management of $271.5 billion as of March 2026, putting it among the larger Asia-headquartered fund managers by that measure. Amova chief executive Stefanie Drews said Vietnam has been a strategic ambition under the firm's Global Growth Plan, a 2022-to-2032 roadmap that combines organic expansion with new joint ventures in target markets across Asia.
Market context
Vietnam's asset management sector remains small relative to the size of its banking system, but the individual investor base has expanded in recent years alongside rising household savings and demand for products beyond bank deposits. BSC, as one of the older licensed brokerages in the country, has built a base of retail brokerage clients that the new venture is expected to draw on when it begins offering fund products, subject to receiving the necessary licenses.
Neither BIDV nor Sumitomo Mitsui Trust has given a specific timeline for when BSC Amova Asset Management will begin operating or open its first funds to investors. The August 25 signing formalizes the joint-venture agreement itself; the next steps involve securing regulatory sign-off in Vietnam before the company can be incorporated and licensed to manage client assets. Amova's other regional moves under its 2022–2032 growth plan have not been disclosed in detail alongside the Vietnam announcement.