South Korea's antitrust watchdog said Tuesday it has slapped a combined 1.54 billion won ($1.3 million) fine on six conglomerates for breaking regulatory filing rules as the country moves to better protect the rights of shareholders.The action by the Fair Trade Commission comes after a three-year probe that kicked off in April 2012, which checked the practices of the country's largest business groups.The FTC said 28 affiliates belonging to six conglomerates failed to complete or delayed filings

South Korean retail giant Lotte's hotel unit has been working on an employee stock ownership scheme as part of preparations to list its stocks on the Seoul bourse, company officials said Sunday. Hotel Lotte, a unit of South Korea's fifth-largest conglomerate Lotte Group, plans to submit an application next month for a preliminary regulatory review of its initial public offering .The company said it has been preparing to establish an employee stock ownership association under the regulation that

All of South Korea's public corporations have agreed to adopt the wage peak system, which delays the mandatory retirement age in return for lower wages as part of labor reform measures, the finance ministry said Sunday.The wage peak system calls for the retirement age of workers to be pushed back, giving them greater job security. The same people benefiting from this, on the other hand, must accept lower wages just before retirement. The money saved will be used to hire new employees in a kind o

Samsung Electronics Co.'s new leader for its flagship mobile business said Wednesday he will not seek an all-out reshuffle of the business, but instead seek stability.The remark came after Koh Dong-jin, who was previously in charge of the mobile research and development, was named to head Samsung's Mobile Communications Business on Tuesday."There will be no large-scale changes," Koh told reporters briefly, when asked if the Mobile Communications Business will go through restructuring, possibly t

South Korea's top conglomerate Samsung Group on Tuesday appointed a new head for its flagship mobile business, which is struggling with falling margins amid rising competition from low-end smartphone makers and Apple Inc.Under its annual executive-level reshuffle, Koh Dong-jin, who was previously in charge of the mobile research and development, was promoted to head Samsung Electronics Co.'s Mobile Communications Business.Shin Jong-kyun, meanwhile, will remain as the head of the IT & Mobile Comm

The chairman of food and entertainment conglomerate CJ Group, who is currently under retrial, has requested a suspension of execution of his three-year jail term, citing the need for medical treatment, officials said Wednesday. Lee Jay-hyun has asked the Seoul High Court for another extension of custody suspension. His confinement has been suspended since August 2013 for several times until Nov. 21.Lee was indicted in 2013 on suspicions of misappropriating some160 billion won ($130 million) in c

A recent survey showed that many Korean workers hold negative views about the local office culture.Job Korea, a Seoul-based job-hunting portal, said today that 48.7 percent of the 604 employees it surveyed said they considered the Korean corporate culture to be negative.  Out of the 48.7 percent, 36.6 percent said the culture is “exceedingly negative,” while another 12.4 percent said it was “generally negative.” Of the respondents, 36.6 percent responded with “neither negative nor positive,” whi

Prosecutors sought a 10-year jail term on Monday for a business tycoon accused of creating slush funds and evading taxes of over 800 billion won ($690 million) in total.Prosecutors demanded the sentence at a trial at the Seoul Central District Court against Cho Suck-rai, chairman of conglomerate Hyosung Group, saying that the group's accounting fraud amounts to 890 billion won over a decade from 1999.Prosecutors also demanded 300 billion won in fines. "While he degraded the company as if it's a

Shin Dong-joo, the Lotte Group founder's oldest son, said Wednesday that he wants things to return to how they were before the sibling squabble erupted over control of the conglomerate, proposing a compromise with his younger brother to end the nasty power struggle.Lotte, the country's fifth-largest conglomerate, is mired in a leadership dispute between group founder Shin Kyuk-ho's two sons -- Dong-joo and Dong-bin -- who had each controlled the company's operations in Japan and Korea until earl

Wealth transfers to succeeding generations in South Korea's family-controlled conglomerates have increased sharply on the back of accelerating management transfers, data showed Wednesday.The younger generations in the country's top 25 business groups took up 41.7 percent of stock assets held by controlling families as of end-August, up 6.5 percentage points from the end of September 2014, according to data compiled by industry tracker CEO Score.The sons and daughters of such families held 32.5 t

Prosecutors said Tuesday they have raided the offices of a defense company and a state defense agency suspected of making illegal deals in the trade of defense equipment.The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office said LIG Nex1 provided defective equipment used to assess the performance of anti-tank guided missiles to the Agency for Defense Development between 2012 and 2014, which cost more than 8 billion won ($6.7 million) in total.The agency is suspected of overlooking faulty parts.Out of t

More than seven out of 10 major South Korean firms have no female executives, data showed Wednesday, indicating that women here face a glass ceiling in the C-suite.As of the end of March, 73.9 percent of the 284 affiliates under the country's top 30 business groups said they have no female workers at the executive level, according to the data compiled by market tracker CEO Score. Likewise, the proportion of high-level corporate officials among each of the sexes also showed a stark contrast. Only

The local unit of Standard Chartered said Tuesday it has appointed the head of its retail sector as the bank president, the first Korean to take the post at the British banking group.Park Jong-bok, who oversaw retail clients at Standard Chartered Bank Korea, will be promoted to bank president as well as group chief executive on Jan. 8, the company said in a press release.The 59-year-old is the first Korean to take the top post since Standard Chartered acquired local lender Korea First Bank in 20