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VinFast to move corporate headquarters to Singapore

VinFast's VF 8, a five-passenger all-electric SUV, one of the vehicles that would be built at the planned Chatham County site.
Rusty Jacobs, WUNC

Vietnamese automaker VinFast will move its headquarters to Singapore.

The transition is part of the company's preparation to enter the U.S. market, which includes a $4 billion factory in Chatham County.

"We feel that Singapore is a jurisdiction that will give investors more confidence," VinFast CEO Le Thi Thu Thuy told Reuters in an interview.

Singapore is an attractive place to do business, thanks to low corporate taxes and an English-speaking workforce. The company is looking to build confidence in investors and consumers, as it rolls out its electric vehicles in the U.S.

VinFast will open its first American showrooms this year. The company is also planning an initial public offering of stock. Thuy declined to give a timeline for the IPO in the Reuters interview.

Thuy joined Gov. Roy Cooper and other state leaders in March, when VinFast announced plans for an electric vehicle manufacturing plan in Chatham County. The automaker will break ground later this year on the 1,900-acre facility at the Triangle Innovation Point megasite in Moncure. The state has promised VinFast more than $300 million in incentives in exchange for hiring 7,500 workers when the plant opens.

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Bradley George is WUNC's AM reporter. A North Carolina native, his public radio career has taken him to Atlanta, Birmingham, Nashville and most recently WUSF in Tampa. While there, he reported on the COVID-19 pandemic and was part of the station's Murrow award winning coverage of the 2020 election. Along the way, he has reported for NPR, Marketplace, The Takeaway, and the BBC World Service. Bradley is a graduate of Guilford College, where he majored in Theatre and German.
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