Legal & Investment Insights

Foreign traders regularly ask whether a liaison office can sign labour contracts in its own name. The short answer on representative office employees Vietnam is yes: the office may recruit and directly employ both Vietnamese nationals and foreign experts, subject to registration, tax and insurance obligations that many head offices underestimate. This guide sets out…

The representative office vs subsidiary Vietnam question is the first structural decision every foreign investor faces, and the one most often decided on cost alone. Cost is the wrong primary test. The right test is whether the business will invoice customers in Vietnam within the first eighteen months. This guide sets out the seven decision…

The VIE structure — variable interest entity — is the contractual arrangement through which offshore holding companies claim economic control over a domestic operating company they cannot lawfully own. Familiar from Chinese technology listings, the VIE structure is used in Vietnam wherever foreign ownership limits, licensing conditions or nominee constraints block direct equity ownership. Foreign…

Choosing between a Vietnam rep office, a branch and a subsidiary is the first structural decision a foreign trader makes on entry, and the most expensive one to reverse. Each vehicle carries a different licensing route, tax profile, liability exposure and permitted scope. This guide compares the three so the choice can be made on…

A Vietnam representative office licence is issued for five years and is the document that legitimises a foreign trader’s presence in the country. Understanding what the licence permits, how it is renewed, when it must be amended and how it is surrendered matters more than the initial filing, because most enforcement action concerns the licence…

To establish representative office in Vietnam lawfully a foreign trader must satisfy five statutory conditions, assemble a consularly legalised dossier, and file with the correct licensing authority. The process is short by regional standards: seven working days from a complete file. The delay almost always sits in document legalisation abroad, not in the Vietnamese authority….

Import duty exemption for fixed assets is the relief that pays for itself in the first shipment, and the one most often lost through sequencing. Equipment forming the fixed assets of an eligible project can be imported free of duty – but the exemption must be established before the machinery arrives, not claimed after it…

Zone tax incentives are the largest single financial advantage Vietnam offers foreign manufacturers, and the one most often claimed on assumption rather than analysis. The incentive attaches to conditions, the conditions are tested annually, and the difference between a modelled benefit and a realised one is documentation. How zone tax incentives are earned Two criteria…

Project financing for an FDI manufacturing project in Vietnam is assembled from four sources, and the mix is constrained by rules that have nothing to do with the bank’s credit appetite. Understanding those constraints before approaching lenders is what separates a fundable structure from a renegotiated one. The four sources of FDI project financing Charter…

An offshore loan is how most foreign-invested companies in Vietnam fund the gap between charter capital and what a factory actually costs. The mechanism works well, but it runs on registration and reporting rules that are unforgiving of informality – and the cost of getting it wrong is money stuck outside the country. Why an…