The Singaporean also said it had an option to raise its stake in the Vietnamese lender to 20 percent, according to the Dow Jones Newswires.
Announcing the deal at a press conference, OCBC Chief Executive David Conner said Vietnam currently had a single foreign shareholder limit of 10 percent, but the rule would likely be relaxed when the country joins the World Trade Organization later this year.
"We would like to go to majority shareholding in Vietnam and in China," he added, referring to the 12.2 percentstake in China's Ningbo Commercial Bank which the Singapore lender acquired for about S$120 million earlier this year.
OCBC said there were significant growth opportunities in Vietnam's financial services sector, given the country's relatively large population of 83 million and high gross domestic product growth, which is the second highest in Asia after China.
The Hanoi-based VP Bank focuses on consumer and small and medium-sized enterprises, and is currently the country's 11th largest bank in terms of assets with a network of 31 branches and sub-branches, according to OCBC.
VP Bank hopes to double its branch network over the next two to three years, the Singapore bank said.
OCBC added that its purchase of VP Bank worked out to around VND45,000 ($2.8) a share, or about 4.5 times book value, and that its option would allow it to buy additional shares in the Vietnamese bank at the same price.
The premium to book value was in line with recent investments in Vietnamese financial institutions by foreign lenders such as HSBC Holdings PLC and Standard Chartered PLC, Conner said.
Source: Dow Jones Newswires