All but one. United Overseas Bank (UOB), which had been their primary banking partner since the group was founded in 1984, stepped up when no one else wanted to. Together with International Enterprise Singapore (IE Singapore), a former iteration of today’s Enterprise Singapore, the group flew to Ho Chi Minh City and travelled two hours to the outskirts to survey the potential of a piece of barren land.
The year was 2008 when cheap credit and lax lending standards fuelled a housing bubble burst that sent ripples of ruin across the global economy. Market confidence and risk appetites worldwide collapsed but one wholesale distributor of chemical products from Singapore had just received its first overseas business licence in Vietnam and they were keen to expand.
Riverbank Group had been selling to Vietnam for several years by then and saw the potential of setting up an infrastructure hub in the country itself for ease of manufacturing, selling and exporting. But as the Global Financial Crisis was unfolding, they struggled to find a financial partner willing to help them actualise their ambitions.
