Capital that builds

Vietnam's success owes a great deal to investment from abroad. In 2025, foreign-invested companies produced about 77 per cent of the country's goods exports, and disbursed foreign direct investment reached 27.6 billion US dollars. Factories, jobs, skills and access to world markets have followed. Many Vietnamese entrepreneurs also welcome a foreign partner or investor into their own company, and often that is exactly the right step.

A question of balance

Like any partnership, outside capital works best when both sides gain over the long term. Investors rightly expect a return, and part of the profit flows back to them as dividends and interest. According to the IMF, Vietnam's net investment income payments to the rest of the world were about 15.7 billion US dollars in 2024. That is a normal feature of an open economy. It does mean that the lasting benefit depends on what stays behind: skills, local suppliers, technology and reinvested profit.

Here there is still room to grow. Surveys reported in 2025 suggest that Japanese companies in Vietnam buy only around 16 per cent of their inputs from Vietnamese-owned suppliers. And a Ministry of Finance report found that more than half of foreign-invested enterprises declared a loss in 2023, which has drawn careful attention to transfer pricing.

Vietnam's leadership has set a clear direction. Politburo Resolution 10-NQ/TW of 8 June 2026 favours the strategic selection of foreign investment rather than attracting it at any cost. Incentives are to be linked to technology transfer, localisation and ties with domestic firms, with the aim of bringing around 10,000 Vietnamese enterprises into the supply chains of foreign-invested companies by 2030. The OECD's 2026 review of Vietnam makes a similar point: future growth depends less on the volume of investment and more on its quality.

The same logic inside a company

The same thinking applies when a family company brings in an outside investor. A new shareholder can be a real saviour in a difficult moment. Over ten or twenty years, though, the terms matter as much as the money: how profits are shared, who decides, whether fees or supply contracts flow to the investor's other businesses, and what happens if the partners come to want different things.

Reinvestment: the quiet test of a good investor

Perhaps the most telling question is what happens to the profits. A good investor reinvests: in better equipment, in people and training, in a stronger balance sheet, in the next market. The company grows sturdier each year, and the original owners share in a business that is worth more than before.

A less suitable investor may take most of the profit out, year after year, through dividends, fees or intercompany charges, while the machines age and the best staff leave. For a while the figures can still look acceptable. But a company that is steadily drained is often only postponing its difficulties, and when they arrive, the original owners may be left with a smaller share of a weaker business than they would have had with a different partner, or with none at all.

Evidence points the same way. An evaluation of the private equity funds backed by the IFC, the World Bank Group's private-sector arm, found that successful funds gave hands-on operational support to their companies in 93 per cent of cases, against 41 per cent for weaker funds. Money alone is rarely the difference. What comes with it, and what is put back in, usually is.

When a sale is the kinder choice

Sometimes the honest conclusion is that an outside shareholder is not the right answer at all. If a company needs more than its owners can give, and no partner with the right intentions can be found, a well-prepared outright sale may serve the family, the staff and the business better than a partnership that slowly weakens it. For founders this is often the hardest option emotionally, because a company is more than an asset. Yet a sale at the right moment, to a buyer who will invest in the business and look after its people, can be a responsible and even generous decision.

A few gentle suggestions

Before accepting outside capital, it helps to be clear what the company needs besides money, such as skills, markets or systems, and to choose a partner who can bring them. Agree in writing how much of the profit will be reinvested, how dividends and fees are decided, and which decisions need the agreement of all shareholders. Consider whether part of the need could first be met from the company's own cash and profits. Compare a partnership honestly with the alternative of a sale. And look for partners who intend to stay, train local people and buy from local suppliers. Such partners exist in large numbers, and they are often the most rewarding to work with.