A Woori Bank branch in Seoul (Yonhap)
South Korea's state deposit insurer said Friday it sold 2.2 percent of its stake in Woori Financial Holdings Co. for some 239 billion won ($199 million).
The Korea Depository Insurance Corp. (KDIC) said that the pre-market sale of 15.86 million shares came in line with a decision by the country's public funds oversight committee, which handles state asset sales.
Following the block deal, the KDIC has a 3.6 percent interest in Woori Financial, one of the four major financial holding firms in Asia's fourth-largest economy.
At the end of last year, the state deposit insurer sold a 9.33 percent stake in Woori Financial to five investors, making the holding firm's employee stockholders association the leading shareholder with 9.8 percent and completely putting it in private hands.
The KDIC said it will make efforts to offload the remaining stake in Woori Financial without a hitch according to a government plan to complete its stake sale by 2022.
With the latest stake sale, the KDIC has recouped about 97 percent of 12.8 trillion won spent to salvage Woori Finance in the aftermath of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Woori Finance was renamed Woori Financial in early 2019. (Yonhap)
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