ING Life Korea is aiming to get close and personal with its existing and potential customers by further “opening its ears” to hear their needs in financial planning.The Korean subsidiary of the global life insurer is boosting in-house training not only for financial consultants but also for executives, in an effort to boost customer relations, its press release said.In addition to the 180-day consulting training, the company has sent its managers and executives to its nationwide centers to meet

FSC chief Kim says local, foreign investors will be treated equallySouth Korea plans to seek bidders for its stake in Woori Finance Holdings Co. in a third attempt to sell the nation’s largest financial company by assets.The government will hold an international auction and announce details on the plan “soon,” Financial Services Commission chairman Kim Seok-dong said in Seoul on Wednesday. Local and foreign investors’ bids will be treated equally, he said.A rally in Asian equity markets this yea

Nokia Oyj’s rating was cut to junk for the first time by a debt rating company as the Finnish mobile-phone maker loses its grip on a market now dominated by Apple Inc. and Asian suppliers such as Samsung Electronics Co. Fitch Ratings Tuesday lowered Nokia’s long-term debt ranking to BB+, one step below investment grade, citing a deterioration in the handset business in the first quarter and a “general lack of visibility.” Fitch said it may further cut the rating if Espoo, Finland-based Nokia’s r

CEO boasts app’s  privacy settings  better than Google, Apple services When she heard about the recent murder case in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, iSharing Soft CEO Reese Cho said she felt anger and frustration.   A 28-year-old woman was found killed and butchered early this month. Despite her last-minute phone call for help, it took 13 hours for police officers to figure out her location.  “I believe that she could have been rescued if her location had bee

The Korea Banking Institute, an educational organization for financial professionals, has named Lee Jang-young, former deputy governor of the Financial Supervisory Service, its new chief. After graduating from Seoul National University with a degree in economics, Lee worked as a professor of economics at the State University of New York, researcher at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, the Korea Institute of Public Finance and economist at the International Monetary Fund.He a

Top beef exporter the United States revealed Tuesday it had discovered a case of mad cow disease in California, prompting a scramble to reassure consumers at home and abroad. (MCT)The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported the country's fourth-ever case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), but stressed the outbreak was contained and no meat has entered the food chain.The infected dairy cow

YEOSU, South Jeolla Province ― POSCO on Tuesday unveiled the first glimpse of its pavilion at the forthcoming Expo 2012 Yeosu that highlights the steelmaker’s efforts to spearhead green technology and shore up ecosystem dynamics. Under the theme “Living Ocean and Coast,” 106 countries and nine international organizations will showcase their diverse marine development and advancement of oceanic technology on the southern shore of the Korean Peninsula starting May 12.The world’s fourth-largest ste

LG Electronics said Tuesday that it hopes to lead global labor-management culture by emphasizing the social responsibility of labor unions. As part of its efforts, a group of union leaders at the company’s Indonesian branch visited Korea for six days, company officials said. Korea is a country where the labor-management relationship has long been hostile, sometimes resulting in physical conflicts. The labor union for LG was the first to claim “union social responsibility” in 2010, with the goal

Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Kun-hee counterattacked his siblings who had described him as a greedy man ahead of a court duel over inheritance.Meeting reporters at the company’s office in southern Seoul on Tuesday, Lee said his older brother Lee Maeng-hee is a “figure that was ousted in our family.”The chief of the country’s largest conglomerate also said no one in his family considered Lee Maeng-hee to be the eldest son of the late Samsung founder Lee Byung-chull. As proof, Lee Maeng-hee ha