South Korea’s antitrust watchdog will embark on a process of punitive action against SK Group and its chairman Chey Tae-won over an accusation that he plundered corporate profits during the group’s 2017 buyout of silicon wafer manufacturing firm LG Siltron, now SK Siltron. According to industry sources on Friday, the Fair Trade Commission here is expected to inform SK Group of findings on its investigation into the SK Group’s possible irregularities during the purchase of th

Daewoong Pharmaceutical is under a prosecutors’ investigation, with industry sources suggesting Friday that the subject of the probe is trade secret misappropriation. The Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office said it conducted a search and seizure operation at Daewoong’s headquarters in Samsung-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Thursday. Officials from the prosecutor’s office did not disclose charges against the South Korean pharmaceutical firm. Some industry sources ra

South Korea has produced only one unicorn startup so far this year, falling far behind the US and China, according to a report from the Federation of Korean Industries. Across the world, a total of 291 startups have attained unicorn status -- reaching a market valuation of over $1 billion -- during the January-July period, according to the FKI report, citing data from tech market research firm CB Insights. Market Kurly, a food delivery and logistics platform here, was the only South Korean e

P&O Chemical, a joint venture between Posco Chemical and OCI, will produce petroleum pitch material for lithium-ion batteries, to respond to increasing demand for battery cells around the globe, Posco Chemical said Thursday. Petroleum pitch is used as a base material for anodes when producing lithium-ion batteries. According to Posco Chemical, the company and its partner OCI will invest a combined 74.5 billion won ($63.4 million) in the joint venture’s project, with a goal of secu

A research team at the Daejeon-based Institute for Basic Science has succeeded in growing single-crystal graphene films that have no wrinkles, folds or adlayers, paving the way for technological advancement in a wide range of fields and industries, including semiconductors, displays and solar cell products. Led by professor Rod Ruoff, the research, titled “Single Crystal, Large-area, Fold-free Monolayer Graphene,” has been published in the leading science journal Nature. Graphene

SK Telecom launched a new subscription-based e-commerce platform T Universe on Wednesday, aiming to attract 36 million subscribers out of the country’s total population of 51 million by 2025. In a press conference held Wednesday, the South Korean telecommunications firm said it has set a target of logging annual transactions worth 8 trillion won ($6.85 billion) by 2025. “T Universe aims to create a new universe of subscription services that benefits both customers and business p

A consortium including GS Group will buy a near half stake in South Korean botulinum toxin manufacturer Hugel for 1.7 trillion won ($1.5 billion), it was announced Wednesday. The deal involves the transfer of a 46.9 percent stake in Hugel currently held by the US private equity Bain Capital. Aside from GS, members of the consortium include CBC, Asia‘s largest healthcare-dedicated investment firm headquartered in Singapore; Mubadala Investment Company, the Abu Dhabi-based investor; and

South Korean biotech firm Seegene has cleared the final hurdle to market in Europe its new sample collection device for COVID-19 diagnostic tests. According to the firm Tuesday, the product, called Combo Swab, has received a CE mark and can be legally commercialized in the EU. A CE mark, required on most goods sold in Europe, shows a product’s conformity to EU’s health, safety and environmental standards. According to Seegene, the sample collection device can be used for its fou

DataStreams, a local big data and cloud solutions provider, said Tuesday that CEO Lee Young-sang has joined the Children’s Traffic Safety Relay Challenge. The road safety campaign was launched on social media in December last year by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety in a bid to raise awareness of children’s road and traffic safety. DataStreams’ chief, as well as four executive members and employees, have joined the relay campaign following an invitation from TSE CEO

South Korean drugmaker Medytox said Tuesday that it has hired Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, a top international law firms, to better respond to intellectual property infringements and misappropriations of the company’s botulinum toxin product. Quinn Emanuel is a law firm specializing in intellectual property litigations, and they are widely known here for representing Samsung Electronics in the company‘s lawsuits against Apple and Huawei. “The US International Trad

Celltrion’s COVID-19 antibody treatment, the world’s third therapy to be developed for the coronavirus, is likely to enter the US and European markets later this year, a local brokerage said in a report Monday. According to Lee Dong-geon of Shinhan Investment, the South Korean pharmaceutical firm is likely to soon apply for the US Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization for Regkirona, or CT-P59, based on the advisory meetings that the firm previously had w

Building on its leadership in lithium-ion batteries, widely used in cars, phones and other electronic devices, LG Energy Solution is accelerating its research for next-generation cells, with an aim of debuting solid-state batteries and lithium-sulfur batteries by 2027. The company said Sunday it also will increase its presence in the global battery market via expanding overseas manufacturing facilities. A wholly owned subsidiary of LG Chem in South Korea, the battery maker has been researchi

Coupang on Thursday has been slapped with fines totaling 3.29 billion won ($2.8 million) for unfair business practices, losing a case which pitted decades-old consumer goods brands against the e-commerce platform operator. The Fair Trade Commission, in announcing the decision, said Coupang has abused its position as a major online marketplace to coerce vendors, including LG Household and Healthcare, to slash the prices of products sold on its platform. Coupang violated several terms of the

South Korean pharmaceutical firm Korea Pharma said Wednesday that the company’s hyperlipidemia drug could potentially be effective against the COVID-19 virus, citing a study result published in international journal Frontiers in Pharmacology. 　 According to the study conducted by Keele University and other institutions, fenofibrate and fenofibric acid, the active metabolite of fenofibrate, reduced the viral infection by up to 70 percent. Fenofibric acid is one of the core ingredients of

Satrec Initiative, a South Korean manufacturer of small- and medium-size observation satellites, will push for the development of an Earth mapping satellite with the world’s highest resolution imaging system, the firm said Wednesday. Named SpaceEye-T, the envisioned aircraft is a 700-kilogram satellite designed to observe the Earth offering imagery with resolution as high as 30 centimeters per pixel, precise enough to verify car models on the ground. The company plans to launch it by

South Korean companies operating in Vietnam have provided a total of 9.2 billion won ($7.8 million or 180 billion dong), in donations to help the Southeast Asian country secure COVID-19 vaccines, according to officials in the South Korean Embassy in Vietnam and local media reports Tuesday. If donations from South Korean individuals are counted, the combined contribution to Vietnam’s vaccine fund could surpass 10 billion won, they said. Forking out the biggest amount was Samsung Electro

The pandemic has opened up a window of opportunity for South Korean pharmaceutical and biotech companies to advance to the global stage. Several local players posted strong earnings by exporting self-developed test kits to foreign countries and secured contract manufacturing deals for COVID-19 vaccines. As a result, the number of pharmaceutical and biotech firms with sales exceeding 1 trillion won ($860.2 million) has increased to nine in 2020 from six a year earlier. Contract development

South Korean pharmaceutical giant Celltrion on Friday said the company’s operating profit fell 10.2 percent in the second quarter through an earnings report. The firm’s operating profit stood at 163.2 billion won during the April-June period, down 10.2 percent from the same period last year. Its sales inched up 0.7 percent to 431.8 billion won. The company said its second-quarter revenue went slightly up, backed by increased overseas sales of the company’s infliximab bios

South Korea has signed a contract with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to purchase 30 million doses of the drugmaker’s COVID-19 vaccine for use in 2022, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said Friday. The deal is part of Seoul’s plan to procure 50 million vaccine booster shots for the country’s population of 52 million, according to KDCA Director Jeong Eun-kyeong. Pfizer’s first batch will ship out in the first quarter of next year, the KDCA added. Under t

South Korean drugmaker Samsung Bioepis said Friday that global sales of five major biosimilar products increased 30 percent on-year in the first half of this year. Sales of the five biosimilar products during the first half reached $166 million, from $128 million from the same period a year earlier, according to an earnings report of its global pharmaceutical partner Organon International, a spinoff of US-based Merck. The five products are etanercept, infliximab, adalimumab, trastuzumab and