Cheil Industries announced Tuesday that it will increase dividend payouts to investors in an apparent attempt to win over stakeholders’ approval of its proposed merger with Samsung C&T.In a bid to sway shareholders, Cheil Industries, the de facto holding company of Samsung Group, called an impromptu investor relations session in Seoul to announce that the payout ratio would gradually be raised to 30 percent by 2020 from 21 percent in 2014.  Yoon Joo-hwa, the head of Cheil Industries’ fashion div

EBay Korea, the operator of Korea’s largest online shopping site Gmarket and Auction.co.kr, signed a deal with the Small & Medium Business Corporation to support domestic small and medium-sized company’s online cross-border trade last week. The pact will help vendors receive eBay For Business, a seven-month training and education program on cross-border commerce and marketing via the eBay platform. Launched in May, the program covers the areas of product sourcing, registration, logistics, delive

Shareholders of defense equipment maker Samsung Techwin approved a plan to change its name to Hanwha Techwin amid strong opposition from its labor union members on Monday.Samsung Techwin’s labor union members protest against its plan to change the name to Hanwha Techwin on Monday. YonhapThe meeting had planned to open early in the morning, but was delayed for hours due to physical protests from the union members, who opposed Hanwha‘s takeover of the company.More than 140 union supporters were ta

Icis 8.0 mineral water from Lotte Chilsung Beverage Co. is making a splash in the country’s tightly contested bottled water market. Launched in August 2011, Icis 8.0 has gained much popularity in a relatively short period of time, aided by the optimized mineral content and eye-catching packaging. The product is bottled in North Chungcheong Province with pH 8 natural mineral water, which the company says offers the optimal calcium-magnesium balance. In addition, the company has applied eco-friend

Solvay Group CEO Jean-Pierre Clamadieu (left) and the Korean unit head Pyung Suk-koo on Monday vowed to focus on the Korean market as the center of research for high-tech materials, at a news conference to celebrate the group’s 40th anniversary since launching in Korea. (Solvay Korea)

Jeon Byeong-eal, the CEO of POSCO’s trading subsidiary Daewoo International, quit Tuesday after a protracted feud with the steelmaker over an overseas natural gas project.He announced his resignation while attending at a meeting of board of directors of the trading company in Seoul.“Having thought about what would be the future-oriented measure for the group, the company and all those concerned, I concluded that resigning is the quickest way to end the situation,” Jeon said.The outgoing CEO had

Domestic institutional investors are expected to support the merger plan between Samsung C&T and its sister company Cheil Industries as the head of local investors’ association categorized U.S.-based hedge fund Elliott Management as a speculator looking for short-term gains. Elliott, the largest foreign investor in Samsung’s construction and trading arm with a 7.12 percent stake, has opposed the merger, saying it would dampen the value of shareholders.  Korea Financial Investment Association cha

Samsung C&T, the construction and trading arm of Samsung Group, is hitting back at stakeholders opposing its proposed merger with Cheil Industries. On Wednesday, the Korean builder released information supporting the proposed merger, saying the move would reinforce the company against uncertainties facing the industry.Saying that the price-book value ratio of major construction firms have dropped below one due to the prolonged slowdown in the industry, Samsung C&T argued that the merger would en

POSCO was named the world’s most competitive steelmaker for the eighth consecutive year, the steelmaker said Tuesday. World Steel Dynamics, a global steel industry researcher, put POSCO at the top of the world-class steelmaker ranking at the conference to discuss success strategies of the steel industry, which was held in New York on Tuesday. The WSD ranked 36 steelmakers from around the world by analyzing 23 categories, including production capacity, profitability, technology innovation and fin

The Middle East respiratory syndrome outbreak is taking a toll on South Korean builders, for whom the Mideast is a major source of revenue.Worries over South Korean construction workers in the Middle East have heightened as South Korea reported the world’s second most MERS infection cases on Monday.Compounding the risk to the firms is an economic one: the potential that workers in the countries leave the workplace and home buyers will not visit model houses fearing infection.“If any one of the d

U.S.-based steel producers have lodged a complaint against South Korean and other steelmakers with the U.S. International Trade Commission accusing them of irregular trade practices.This is the first time that a country’s steel industry has taken anti-dumping retaliatory proceedings against foreign competitors this year ― duties were levied on some global steelmakers by authorities in six markets including Korea and China over similar disputes last year.According to an overseas media outlet, the

POSCO’s impending deal with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is raising both concerns and expectations for Korea’s largest steelmaker. According to financial industry sources, POSCO is set to sell 15.89 million shares or about 38 percent of POSCO Engineering and Construction to Saudi’s Public Investment Fund, or PIF.The two sides are expected to ink the deal within this month, said a source close to the matter.The sale is expected to give POSCO a boost in its efforts to streamline its affili

South Korean shipbuilders failed to strike a single deal in selling offshore support vessels in the January-April period, a sign that they are at risk of losing the market to increasingly confident Chinese competitors.Up to 22 of 34 offshore support vessels worldwide were sold by Chinese shipbuilders during the period, while local firms posted zero sales, according to industry reports. China’s outpacing of local shipbuilders, including Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering and Hyundai Heavy I

Hanwha Group’s new chemical affiliate Hanwha Total Petrochemicals is mired in safety controversies less than a month after being rebranded from Samsung.The Labor Ministry said Tuesday it lacked appropriate safety measures and “fell short of legal standards” at its factory in Daesan, South Chungcheong Province.The company is under surveillance after a construction worker died from a fall at the site on May 19. The ministry said it would decide whether to press charges within this month after the

POSCO, the country’s leading steelmaker, was granted approval by the Chinese government to build a steel mill there with an annual capacity of 3 million tons, the company said Wednesday. Once the company gets the green light from the South Korean government, POSCO will build the facilities in the southwestern city of Chongqing, which will produce steel using the firm’s self-developed Finex technology. The development comes less than two years after the company and Chinese steelmaker Chongqing Ir

POSCO Plantec on Tuesday decided to submit workout plans to its creditors, the company said on Tuesday.The main creditor, the Korea Development Bank, will decide whether to approve the plans early June.If the plans are rejected, and the parent company declines to inject more funds into the unit, POSCO Plantec will become POSCO’s second subsidiary in its 47-year history to be put under court supervision.The plant parts unit also confirmed that about 89.2 billion won ($81.2 million) of its loans i

Hotel Shilla and Hyundai Development Co. launched a joint venture on Monday to run a downtown duty-free store in Seoul, a burgeoning duty-free market worth 3.2 trillion won ($2.9 billion). The event comes a week before the firms join a bid for a new downtown duty free license to be issued in Seoul later this year, which is expected to be a tight race against major competitors ― Hanwha Galleria, Lotte Duty Free and SK Networks.If the joint venture is granted the downtown duty-free license in July

Hyundai Heavy Industries is streamlining its financial units as part of an ongoing group-wide restructuring to ride out financial difficulties. The shipbuilder said Friday that it would realign the businesses of Hyundai Finance Corp., Hyundai Venture Investment and Hyundai Futures as part of its large-scale restructuring efforts to streamline business operations and combat the group’s financial crisis.Hyundai Finance chairman Chung Mong-il, the eighth son of the late Hyundai Group founder Chung

The country’s leading steelmaker, POSCO, announced Thursday that it had sold off its entire stake in the Australian copper mining firm Sandfire Resources. POSCO’s 15.2 percent stake in the firm was sold for 130 million Australian dollars ($102.7 million). POSCO acquired the Sandfire shares in 2008 for about A$290 million as part of its efforts to diversify its raw materials sources.Although Sandfire has been profitable, POSCO categorized its investment in the firm as a nonessential asset and sol

The Paris summit on climate change coming up in December will be a test of the ability of world leaders to read science accurately, and to act in the long-term interests of their countries and their planet.But the spotlight is also on business.Traditionally understood to be a major source of the problem, the private sector is now becoming a necessary part of the solution.The first cracks in the ice of corporate inactivity came in 2009, as the United Nations mounted a climate change summit in Cop