Walkabout Elevations Podcast

27/08/2026

How will Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang specialize in the Vietnam International Finance Center? | Jochen Biedermann

27/08/2026

Vietnam is creating wealth. The bigger question may be: can it make that wealth last?

At the Vietnam Financial Forum 2026, I sat down with Lu Zhou, CEO of Vanquor Wealth Management in New York, whose personal and professional journey gives her a fascinating perspective on that question.

She grew up in China, moved to the United States 26 years ago, built a career on Wall Street, and watched a generation of newly wealthy Chinese investors arrive in America asking a deceptively simple question:

How does "new money" become "old money"?

That took our conversation well beyond financial centers.

We talked about what Vietnam can learn from China's rise, attracting global talent, family offices, generational wealth, financial literacy, teaching children to invest, women on Wall Street, and why creating wealth is very different from preserving it.

Lu believes Vietnam is already approaching an important economic inflection point.

"The music already started."

Now comes the difficult part: keeping it playing.

https://youtu.be/-VMwtqh5Dxc

✳️ Saw the world through my lens? Now read the story behind it. Len...

25/08/2026

Can Vietnam become one of Asia's important financial centers?

That question becomes much more interesting when you ask someone who works with financial centers across five continents.

At the Vietnam Financial Forum, I sat down with Jochen Biedermann, Managing Director of the World Alliance of International Financial Centers and an advisor to Vietnam's International Financial Center initiative.

We discussed what Vietnam needs to get right: regulation, infrastructure, international connectivity, talent, capital flows and, critically, the ability to retain the people it invests in developing.

We also explored Da Nang's unusual position in the story.

Could a city already known for tourism and technology develop into a serious fintech and financial hub? And should Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City specialize separately, or might a little competition between them actually make both stronger?

Jochen's answer surprised me.

This was one of the more substantive conversations I had at the Vietnam Financial Forum, because it puts Vietnam's ambitions into a genuinely global context.

✳️ Saw the world through my lens? Now read the story behind it. Len...