Analysis of factors affecting financial distress in Vietnam – an emerging economy in East Asia

Understanding the conditions leading to business failure and predicting them earlier is the best way for companies to overcome and minimize their harm, improve their performance, and avoid financial distress and bankruptcy. This paper aims to measure the level and trends of factors affecting financial distress in Vietnam – an emerging Southeast Asian economy, along with the managerial implications drawn from the research results. Research data were collected from 606 firms listed on the Vietnam Stock Exchange from 2018 to 2022. The Altman Z-score is used to determine the financial distress of these firms. The factors researched and tested in this study are all internal factors divided into two groups with distinct features. Non-financial factors belong to management characteristics; financial factors are typical indicators of a firm’s financial statements. The study uses OLS, FEM, and REM models to analyze the influence of financial factors (Total liability to Total assets, Sales growth, Firm size, and Firm age) and non-financial factors (Board size, CEO duality, Institutional ownership level, Independent member, and Foreign CEOs) on financial distress and GLS regression to overcome the model’s shortcomings. The results show that the factors in the research model significantly impact financial distress, of which six factors (Board size, CEO duality, Institutional ownership level, Foreign CEOs, Sales growth, and Firm age) are negatively correlated. Three other factors (Independent members, Total liability to Total assets, and Firm size) are positively correlated with financial distress. AcknowledgmentThe author thanks everyone who helped make this study possible.