Vietnam Bank Stocks Trouncing Asia Signal End of Bad-Debt Crisis

Vietnam’s bank stocks are rallying at the fastest pace in Asia, signaling a recovery from the bad-debt crisis that’s weighed on economic growth for three years.

Joint-Stock Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam and the nation’s four other biggest lenders by market value have advanced an average 23 percent during the past three months, the most since 2013 and twice as much as the regional mean. Nonperforming debt at the nation’s banks dropped to about 3.25 percent at the end of 2014 from 17 percent two years earlier, government data show.