[THE INVESTOR] Cheil Worldwide, an advertising unit of Samsung Group, said on June 13 that talks to sell a controlling stake to French ad giant Publicis Groupe have failed. In a regulatory filing, the nation’s No. 1 ad agency said it was not in talks with any other firm.“Talks between main stakeholders and the global advertising agency ended without a specific conclusion,” the company said. Over the past week, media reports have speculated that Cheil was discussing stake sales with other compani

[THE INVESTOR] South Korea’s public pension fund will keep increasing alternative investments and reduce local equities in the long term, as the behemoth’s snowballing assets will be too large for the domestic stock market, its chief investment officer has said.The National Pension Service, which manages about 524 trillion won ($450 billion) collected from 21 million Korean subscribers, is a significant client for leading asset managers around the world, who are hunting attractive real estate, i

[THE INVESTOR] Korea’s stock market will see mega initial public offerings during the second half this year with subsidiaries of large conglomerates like Samsung and Lotte poised to fuel the IPO market.  Given that companies commonly push for public listing after posting half-year earnings in June, more deals will fill up this year’s upcoming IPO calendar, following the robust first half, thanks to the stock market that is recovering from negative sentiments.As of June 8, a total of 15 companies

[THE INVESTOR] On Nov. 11, 2010, with just 10 minutes for the stock market to close in Seoul, traders of Deutsche Bank dumped 2.4 trillion won ($2.05 billion) worth of Korean shares, triggering a 2.7 percent drop on the country’s main KOSPI index. The massive and coordinated sell-off by Deutsche employees in Hong Kong and Seoul wiped out 28 trillion won in value from Korea’s equity market, but the German bank reaped a profit of 44.9 billion won through derivative positions it had built in advanc