Foreigners received an all-time high of dividend payouts from South Korea's 10 largest business groups last year, with the amount surpassing 7 trillion won ($6.46 billion) for the first time, industry data showed Sunday. Among the 15.3 trillion won of dividends paid by companies affiliated with the top 10 conglomerates last year, foreigners received 7.11 trillion won, according to the Seoul-based corporate tracker Chaebul.com. The ratio of foreign dividend payouts rose from 43.7 percent of the t

South Korean shares are expected to move up and down in a tight range as investors remain cautious on lingering uncertainty over US monetary policy, analysts here said Saturday.   The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index closed at 2,402.16 on Friday, down 2.01 percent from a week ago.   Investors are likely to adopt a wait-and-see attitude over US monetary policy.    Earlier this week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell offered an optimistic assessment of

Local investors are borrowing a large amount in loans to buy local stocks as the country's bourse has maintained a generally upward trajectory, despite a slump in the pace of growth, market data showed Saturday.   The amount of money borrowed to buy stocks, the so-called margin debt, reached 11.24 trillion won ($10.4 billion) as of Tuesday, slightly down from an all-time high of 11.42 trillion won tallied on Feb. 2, according to the data compiled by the Korea Financial Investment Assoc

President Moon Jae-in retained on Friday Lee Ju-yeol, the incumbent Bank of Korea Gov. and the head of Monetary Policy Committee, to serve another four-years for the nation‘s central bank, sending the market a sign that it will not pursue a drastic change in its monetary policy.Cheong Wa Dae said the decision to reinstate Lee as the BOK chief signifies Moon’s willingness to “ensure neutrality and independence” of the central bank.The reappointment came amid the South Kore

South Korea‘s top-tier stock market Kospi retreated 1 percent on Friday, while the local currency strengthened, in part on fears over heightening tariff threats by US President Donald Trump triggering a possible trade war.On Friday, the Kospi came close to breaching 2,400 mark by closed at 2,402.16, down 1 percent compared to the previous trading day. The market maintained a losing streak for three consecutive trading days since Tuesday. Korean stock markets closed on Thursday for a nation

Korea avoided the worst case scenario of being slapped with duties of up to 53 percent on steel exports to the United States, but it will invariably take a hit if fresh duties are put in place, industry experts said Friday.US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he would impose uniform 25 percent duties on imported steel to protect US producers, with a formal decision due next week.The announcement could not have come at a worse time for Korean steel mills already struggling with rising

´South Korean brokerages’ combined yearly net profit in 2017 hit a 10-year high, mainly on the back of a stock market boom that led to an upshot in revenue from brokerage fees and trades of shares and derivatives, data showed Tuesday.The total net profit for the 55 securities firms came to 3.83 trillion won ($3.57 billion) in 2017, up 79.6 percent from a year prior, according to a preliminary set of data by the Financial Supervisory Service. The figure was the highest since 2007, whe

Korea's financial regulator has briefed a global anti-money laundering body on its obligations related to cryptocurrency transactions to tackle money laundering, officials said Monday.Korea's anti-money laundering guidelines for cryptocurrency trading were the first to be drawn up among members of the Financial Action Task Force, the Financial Services Commission said in a statement.At its regular meeting of 37 members in Paris last week, member states also urged the global body to improve the u

South Korean financial firms’ assets under management hit a record high of 950 trillion won ($880.9 billion) in 2017, up 4.7 percent from the previous year, data showed Sunday.The hike in the volume of professionally managed assets was driven by a surge in private funds’ increase in property investment, as well as increased capital for discretionary investment in domestic shares and overseas bonds, according to preliminary data from the Financial Supervisory Service.Despite the recor

Distributed ledgers like the blockchain system are increasingly setting a new standard for paperwork-free global banking in various financial areas, such as the management of a cash pool for currency exchanges or payments, as well as trade finance. Spearheading the trend to minimize and possibly eliminate the manual business process in interbank transactions is a technology called “smart contract,” through which records of direct transactions between parties can be protected on a dec

After enjoying a prosperous 2017, South Korea’s financial players are now facing a challenging year ahead, amid escalating competition in the digital financing sector, government pressure on household debt control and incoming financial consumer law.Hana Financial Group, the nation’s third-largest banking group in assets, is determined to hold ground and prolong its uptrend by maximizing the synergy between its banking and non-banking businesses.It is also planning to expand financia

Bank of Korea Gov. Lee Ju-yeol said Tuesday that while lingering political deadlock has held back talks to renew a currency swap deal with Japan, Korea would not be rushing it, during his visit to Zurich to sign a swap agreement with Swiss National Bank.“The talks of extending a deal (with the Japanese central bank) are being suspended since the deal expired, in the wake of a diplomatic and political row (between Korea and Japan),” Lee told Korean correspondents in Zurich on Tuesday.

South Korea’s national luge team -- made up of nine sliders and six coaches – improved their performance in the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games overall.In the team relay, Korea climbed up three notches and came in about 26 seconds faster compared to Sochi Winter Games in 2014. In the women’s individual event, Sung Eun-ryung jumped 11 notches to finish in 18th with an improvement of about 20 seconds.On the back of such performance stood Hana Financial Group, which has extended sup

ZURICH -- The bilateral currency swap deal with Switzerland proves that South Korea's economic fundamentals remain strong and there's trust in fiscal policy, the head of South Korea's central bank has said. Lee Ju-yeol, governor of the Bank of Korea, made the remarks Tuesday after signing the currency swap deal with the chairman of the Swiss National Bank's governing board, Thomas Jordan. The three-year swap agreement enables Korean won and Swiss francs to be purchased and repurchased between th

South Korea’s agriculture cooperative-based NH NongHyup Bank developed a system to assess the quality of its customer calls in November and recently had a patent registered for the technology, officials said Tuesday.Built and operated on artificial intelligence and big data, the system gathers customer phone call records, sorts them out according to demands and designates an optimized level of customer service.“The new system will help us keep a more detailed watch on our financial c