The Impact of Foreign Ownership on Credit Risk of Commercial Banks in Vietnam: Before the Context of Participation in the CPTPP

The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is projected to provide several chances for Vietnam's banking industry to expand into the international market. This study examines the influence of foreign ownership on credit risk in Vietnamese commercial banks before the context of participation in the CPTPP. Using a sample of 28 commercial banks between 2009 and 2020, we find that foreign ownership has a negative relationship with bank credit risk. The regression methods used include the least-squares method, fixed-effects model, random effects model, and general least squares method. The research model adds interactive variables, which will help to reflect the role of intermediary factors more accurately such as listing on the stock market, capital ratio to the relationship between foreign ownership and bank credit risk. The test results reveal that increasing the foreign ownership ratio has a bigger impact on reducing credit risk for listed banks and banks with low capital than for other commercial banks. The government should flexibly adjust the foreign ownership ratio according to the capital size and role of each bank so that it can make good use of investment capital from abroad when Vietnam joins the CPTPP.