Loans extended to companies in South Korea grew at a slow pace in the fourth quarter of last year, as manufacturing firms got fewer loans amid the coronavirus pandemic, central bank data showed Wednesday. The outstanding amount of corporate loans came to 1,393.6 trillion won ($1.23 trillion) at the end of December last year, up 27.7 trillion won from three months earlier, according to the data f...

South Korea’s financial regulator said Tuesday it has extended the grace period for loan repayments until September as part of policy effort to support individuals and businesses reeling from the resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic. “In response to small-and medium-sized enterprises and merchants’ economic difficulties wrought by the prolonged social distancing rules amid the virus resurgence, t...

Co-founded in 2012 by Israeli entrepreneur and investor Ohad Topor and co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management Howard Marks, TCK -- a Korean arm of London-based family office Topor & Co. -- has strived to provide its individual and corporate clients with the investing styles such as endowment style investing to create a multi-asset class portfolio. Its employees comprise investment professional...

South Korea’s financial authorities plan to launch an industry-wide probe into insurers selling foreign currency insurance -- which has been gaining popularity here in recent years -- next month, on allegations of possible misselling of the high-risk products, sources said Friday. When customers subscribe to foreign currency insurance in Korea, they pay an insurance premium with foreign currency...

NPS is world’s 11th-largest coal investor, NongHyup is Korea’s top coal-financing bank, data shows

Kim Jung-tai, the incumbent chairman of Hana Financial Group, was officially tapped by board members to lead the banking giant for another year, the group said Thursday. Hana Financial Group’s recommendation committee for CEO nominations had recommended Kim as the sole candidate for the next president, allowing him to clinch a fourth term in office. Once the appointment is confirmed during a ge...

South Korea’s public pension fund, the National Pension Service, has logged a 9.7 percent return last year to gain 72.1 trillion won ($65 billion) in its preliminary estimate, the government said Wednesday. Health Minister Kwon Deok-chul, who chairs NPS’ Fund Management Committee, added that the world’s third-largest pension fund was managing 833.7 trillion won worth of assets as of end-2020, in...

Price plunges more than 20% within two days

South Korea’s financial watchdog on Wednesday ordered two Korean commercial banks -- Woori Bank and the Industrial Bank of Korea -- to compensate end-investors for at least half of the damages they incurred in a 1.7 trillion won ($1.5 billion) misselling scandal involving now-defunct hedge fund Lime Asset Management. The authorities held the banks accountable for “poor efforts in the exercise of...

The Export-Import Bank of Korea said Monday it plans to set up a global environmental, social and governance-related fund worth at least $200 billion won ($180 million) to support local firms seeking to expand businesses overseas. The size of the fund could be expanded and the state-run bank will invest a combined 50 billion won in the fund. Once the manager of the fund is determined, it would ...

South Korea‘s public pension fund, the National Pension Service, has boosted its United States stock exposure to $43.9 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020, a US filing showed Monday. The world’s third-largest pension fund, which was managing 807.3 trillion won ($729 billion) of assets as of November, saw its US stock exposure rise by $5.8 billion over the October-December period of 2020, accor...

Tensions between the nation’s financial regulator and its central bank are escalating. The two institutions are at odds over which one should hold supervisory authority in the area of online payment settlements, which are emerging as key financial transactions in this era of the digital economy. Payment settlement is the process through which a merchant receives the money that customers have pai...

Citibank Korea has yet to announce its fourth-quarter performance. Revenue from Citi’s consumer banking business in Asia fell 15 percent to $1.55 billion in the last three months of 2020. If Fraser decided to go ahead with a divestiture plan, it would be nothing new. The incoming CEO was behind the shocking offloading of retail banking and credit card operations in Brazil, Argentina and Colombi...

US-based international investment manager BlackRock became a blockholder of South Korea’s internet giant Kakao, in an apparent bet on the corporation behind Korea’s most popular messenger app, a filing showed Friday. The US investor’s subsidiary BlackRock Fund Advisors and its 13 affiliates have spent 986.4 billion won ($891.9 million) to obtain 5.18 percent of common shares in Kakao as of Monda...

South Korea’s top financial regulator Eun Sung-soo said Friday that its earlier call on its creditors to extend additional support to financially pinched commercial vehicle maker SsangYong Motor remains “valid.” Eun, chairman of the Financial Services Commission, said that he found common ground “in a broader sense” with SsangYong’s main creditor Korea Development Bank, which has refused to exte...