Heads of family-run conglomerates continue to control empires with little stakes Owners of Korea’s leading family-run conglomerates, or chaebol, are still opting to employ circular intra-group shareholding practices to run a large number of affiliates with little or no stake ownership, the state-run antitrust regulator said Thursday. According to the Fair Trade Commission, each chairperson of t...

HONG KONG (Yonhap News) ― The Chinese subsidiary of South Korean conglomerate SK Group said Thursday it has entered the car rental business in a bid to tap into the world’s most populous country. SK China Co. said it started renting automobiles this month in nine cities, including Beijing, Hangzhou and Shenyang. It currently has 1,200 vehicles, including sedans and sport utility vehicles manufa...

South Korea’s top soft drink maker Lotte Chilsung Beverage Co. said Thursday that it decided to absorb and merge with Lotte Liquor BG Co., its alcoholic beverage affiliate, to boost shareholder value. Lotte Chilsung said the merger will take effect on Oct. 1, and the merger ratio will be 1:0. Lotte Chilsung holds a 100 percent stake in Lotte Liquor. “The merger is aimed at maximizing shareholde...

Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. said Thursday that its second-quarter earnings fell 3.6 percent from a year earlier as it filled more orders for low-priced ships that were won following the global economic downturn. Net income reached 170 billion won ($162 million) in the April-June period, compared with a profit of 177 billion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory fi...

S-Oil Corp. said Thursday its second-quarter net profit more than quadrupled compared to a year earlier, driven by brisk sales of petrochemicals and lubricants. In a regulatory filing, Korea’s No. 3 refiner posted 239.7 billion won ($227.7 million) in net profit for the April-June period, up 346.4 percent year-on-year. Sales shot up 63.4 percent to top 8 trillion won for the same period, settin...

Hyundai Steel said Thursday its earnings hit new highs in the April-June period, breaking the previous record set in the first three months of this year. The company posted sales of 4.05 trillion won ($3.8 billion) for the second quarter. This is the first time Hyundai Steel has posted quarterly sales of more than 4 trillion won. In comparison to the same period last year, Hyundai Steel’s sales ...

Hyundai Motor Co., the nation’s largest carmaker, logged a 37 percent increase in net income for the second quarter, beating consensus forecast on record overseas sales benefited from the demand-drop for Japanese carmakers after the March earthquake. The company posted a net income of 2.3 trillion won ($2.2 billion) in the April-June period, posting a sharp increase from 1.68 trillion won in the...

But they remain skeptical about M&As at present stage Major securities firms are moving to meet the regulatory requirements in a bid to attain recognition as large-sized investment banks. The brokerages, such as Daewoo Securities and Samsung Securities, are poised to resort to increasing their equity capital as an initial step rather than pushing for mergers among them. Most of them plan to in...

The weight of exports in the South Korean economy hit an all-time high in the second quarter, central bank data showed Thursday, underlining the country’s heavy dependence on overseas shipments for economic growth. Seasonally adjusted exports of goods and services amounted to 141.7 trillion won ($134.6 billion) in the April-June period, or 52.68 percent of the gross domestic product, according t...