VIETNAM

BankAmerica to Open Hanoi Branch: BankAmerica Corp. is planning to open an office in Hanoi within several months, returning after an 18-year hiatus, a bank spokeswoman said last week. The San Francisco-based bank, which fled the country at the end of the Vietnam War, still needs approval from Vietnamese authorities, although the U.S. Treasury Department has authorized the move, spokeswoman Kaori Ikegaya said. “They are aiming to be up and running by the end of the first quarter,” she said. BankAmerica left Vietnam in 1975 when the then-South Vietnamese capital of Saigon--now renamed Ho Chi Minh City--was overrun by Communist forces. Since then, U.S. companies have been banned from doing business with Vietnam under a U.S. government-imposed economic embargo. The Bush Administration began relaxing the embargo last year but did not lift it. The State Department has said that the Clinton Administration was reviewing speeding up normalization of relations with Hanoi, although there is no timetable.