SEJONG -- South Korea's exports fell 5.8 percent on-year in the first 20 days of October amid the fallout from the new coronavirus outbreak, customs data showed Wednesday. The nation's outbound shipments stood at $25.2 billion in the Oct. 1-20 period, compared with $26.7 billion a year ago, according to the data from the Korea Customs Service. Per-day exports, however, rose 5.9 percent on-year in the Oct. 1-20 period, the Korea Customs Service said. This month, fewer working days from the Ch

South Korea’s financial watchdog on Tuesday recommended that Lime Asset Management lose its license, the toughest penalty possible, for defrauding its investors and costing them trillions of won.  The FSS decision followed a meeting to decide the level of sanctions it would advise the regulator, the Financial Services Commission, to impose on the Seoul-based hedge fund manager. If the FSC agrees, Lime’s license as a privately pooled fund manager could be revoked as early as Nov

South Korea's state pension fund said Tuesday it has partnered with its Dutch counterpart to make joint investments in overseas assets. The National Pension Service has recently joined hands with APG Asset Management, which runs the biggest Dutch pension fund, to explore investment opportunities in global markets, the NPS said in a statement. The partnership came as the Korean pension fund increases the ratio of alternative investments in global markets amid low rates and an extended slowdown,

South Korean power plant builder Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction Co. said Tuesday it has signed a $787 million deal to build a coal-fired power plant in northeastern Vietnam. Under the deal with Vapco, a Vietnamese unit of the state-run Korea Electric Power Corp. (Kepco), Doosan Heavy Industries will build the plant and provide equipment including boilers from March 2021 to February 2025, the company said in a regulatory filing. Early this month, the board of Kepco decided to take

South Korea’s major financial state-owned corporations turned out to have imposed excessive interest amounts that far exceed the principal upon small-sized debtor businesses, raising skepticism about their “inclusive finance” policy functions, data showed Tuesday. According to data submitted to Rep. Min Hyung-bae, lawmaker of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea and a member of the parliamentary finance committee, the four state-owned companies affiliated with the Financial

South Korean shares rose for a second straight session Tuesday, as investors hold on to hopes for progress in the new US stimulus talks. The Korean won rose to an 18-month high against the US dollar. After choppy trading, the benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) rose 11.67 points, or 0.5 percent, to close at 2,358.41. Trading volume was moderate at about 862 million shares worth some 11.7 trillion won ($10.3 billion), with losers outnumbering gainers 514 to 323. Foreigners boug

JPMorgan Asset Management has reduced its stake in South Korean securities brokerage house Kiwoom Securities to cash out 26.1 billion won ($22.9 million), in an apparent profit-making move, a filing showed Tuesday. Since August, Hong Kong-based JPMorgan Asset Management Asia Pacific and five affiliated parties had unloaded a combined 1.11 percent stake in the Seoul-based brokerage house without a brick-and-mortar branches. The transaction cut JPMorgan’s stock holding to 3.9 percent, stee

   Women in leadership positions are still rare at South Korea’s state-run financial institutions, despite the government’s policy drive to empower female workers at the public offices, data showed Tuesday.  As of 2019, eight out of nine public financial bodies in the country were found to have zero women at the executive level, with the exception being the Korea Asset Management Corp., in which two women are holding senior management roles, said Rep. Bae Jin-gyo of

Major South Korean bank KB Kookmin’s incumbent CEO is likely to keep his role for another year, as he was tapped by board members on Tuesday as the sole candidate for the position, the firm said. KB Kookmin Bank CEO Hur Yin has been selected by the lender’s holding group KB Financial Group’s affiliate leadership nomination committee to serve his third term as his one-year second term is set to end on Nov. 20. Hur would have to gain approvals from a similar, yet lower committe

Major South Korean banking group KB Financial Group said Tuesday that it has issued 500 billion won ($439.1 million) worth of hybrid bonds focused on environmental, social and governance investment. They are the first won-denominated ESG bonds issued by a banking group here, the firm said. While a growing number of local financial institutions have floated ESG bonds in recent years, it was usually the major banking group’s flagship lenders that handled the business, not the holding compan

Local office space sharing firm Sparkplus is gearing up for an initial public offering next year, according to company officials on Tuesday. As the company plans to make its debut on the nation’s tech-heavy Kosdaq bourse, it recently chose local brokerage firm Mirae Asset Daewoo as its leading underwriter. However, the exact size of the deal and the date of listing have not yet been decided, the firm said. Sparkplus was jointly established by Aju Hotels & Resorts and accelerator Spar

South Korea said Tuesday it will lift the export ban on nonwoven fabrics this week that are used to produce protective masks as the domestic supply of the materials and masks stabilized. Under the decision, the country will lift the regulation that bans firms from exporting more than 15 percent of their production of nonwoven fabrics starting Friday, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. Earlier this year, the country ran out of melt-blown nonwoven fabric filters amid soarin

Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. said Tuesday it has developed an AI robot for metalworking in the construction of ships for the first time in the world. The AI hot working robot, called Goknuri, is now used to shape steel plates into curved ones at the front and the rear of a steel hull in Daewoo Shipbuilding's shipyard in Geoje Island, about 400 kilometers south of Seoul, South Korea's leading shipbuilder said. Hot working is the metalworking process carried out above 800 C

Sales of bonds and certificates of deposits (CDs) in South Korea climbed more than 14 percent in the third quarter of the year from a year earlier, data showed Tuesday. The value of those debt instruments issued in the July-September period came to 114 trillion won ($100 billion), up 14.1 percent from a year ago, according to the data from the Korea Securities Depository (KSD). The third-quarter amount, however, was down 14.8 percent from the previous quarter. The KSD didn't give reasons for

South Korean shares opened nearly flat Tuesday amid slower-than-expected progress in the new US stimulus talks. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) rose 1.3 points, or 0.06 percent, to 2,348.04 in the first 15 minutes of trading. Investor sentiment remained risk-averse as negotiations for the fresh US stimulus scheme are showing meaningful progress. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.44 percent to 28,195 on Monday (New York time). The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite inde