Amid liquidity-driven booms in the real estate and stock markets amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of people with assets of more than 1 billion won ($847,000) increased by over 10 percent last year from a year earlier, a report showed Sunday.  The number of Koreans with financial assets worth over 1 billion won stood at 390,000 last year, taking up 0.76 percent of the total population, according to the Korea Wealth Report 2021 released by KB Financial Group Research Institute. The

Local online platform Funderful plans to offer fans access to investments in Korean productions

South Korea’s financial watchdog on Friday warned online-only lender KakaoBank to improve its monitoring system that protects against money laundering. Financial Supervisory Service concluded that KakaoBank’s anti-money-laundering team lacks a monitoring process, relying only on receiving tips from other teams. As a result of weak monitoring, the online lender failed to ring the alarm on several cases that involved suspicious money transfers overseas, the FSS said. For instance,

CEOs go to YouTube, ‘metaverse’ to connect with customers of tomorrow

As part of efforts to grow together with the local community, Citibank Korea, the South Korean unit of Citigroup, has carried out diverse social contribution programs, while beefing up management activities focused on environmental, social and governance factors, or ESG, the lender said Thursday.  Based on three principles, including employee participation, long-term commitment and leading activity, the foreign bank has continuously fostered a volunteer culture among employees for its corp

South Korea’s sole sovereign wealth fund Korea Investment Corp. said Thursday that it has teamed up with two Korean institutional investors to deploy a combined $300 million for co-investment with non-Korean hedge funds in a bid to increase foreign alternatives exposure. Under the plan, the three entities -- KIC, National Agricultural Cooperative Federation and National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives -- will create a joint venture before the end of 2021 and start their first co-inv

One out of 10 small and midsize company owners are selling their firms because their children are refusing to take over the family business, preferring a cash inheritance by selling the companies their parents built, a survey showed Tuesday. According to Korea M&A Exchange, a platform that mediates buyers and sellers of small and medium-sized enterprises, of the 5,481 business owners looking for buyers, 515 said they were looking for new owners to take over their firms as their children di

The US-based global banking giant Citigroup will reportedly spend up to $1.5 billion, or 1.8 trillion won, on the withdrawal of its retail business in South Korea, according to news reports Tuesday. The group said in a regulatory filing that its expenditure on severance pay for employees at the Korean subsidiary’s retail banking operations will range between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion. It will pay the envisioned personnel costs in phases by the end of next year, the Wall Street Jour

Seoul-based family office Topor & Co. Korea, co-led by investment banking professional and TV celebrity Mark Tetto, said Tuesday the company has obtained an asset management license in South Korea to expand services for its client base. The move is aimed at expanding its current client offerings to include the privately placed fund business for qualified professional investors under Korean law, TCK said. In line with the move, TCK was rebranded as Topor & Co. Korea Asset Management in

The megahit Netflix series “Squid Game” depicts a dystopian world where 456 people compete in a series of extreme survival games on a remote island. The sole winner takes all the prize money, while everyone else bites the dust. In the real world, all the “Squid Game” deaths would be eligible for insurance coverage, according to a local insurance company. The question is whether those death benefits would differ depending on how the player died, it added. According to a

Citibank Korea, the South Korean unit of Citigroup, has ramped up efforts to gain an upper hand in sustainable financing, focused on environmental, social and governance factors, to support local companies’ ESG management, the lender said Sunday. Sustainable financing refers to a bank’s financial services, ranging from loans to bonds, designed to provide financial support for sustainable economic activities and projects of private companies or public entities. The prolonged COVID-19

US investment firm KKR & Co. said Friday it has acquired newly issued redeemable convertible preferred shares of South Korean energy company SK E&S for 2.4 trillion won ($2 billion). The investment, via KKR‘s Asia Pacific Infrastructure Fund, will provide KKR with an opportunity to receive cash or in-kind redemption for repayment in the future, as well as an opportunity to convert the securities into common shares of SK conglomerate’s natural gas arm, according to KKR. The

Convenience store chain operator BGF has confirmed Friday its plan to acquire a stake in engineering plastic resin maker Kopla for at least 180.8 billion won ($152.6 million), in a strategic move to enter into a new business, sending its shares jumping nearly 30 percent at some point. According to filings with the Financial Supervisory Service, BGF is poised to acquire 11 million common shares of Kopla from Kopla President Han Sang-yong and his affiliated parties and through a new rights offer

South Korean institutional investors have allocated a combined 90 million euros ($104 million) of commitment to a separately structured coinvestment vehicle of a fourth flagship fund by BlackRock Infrastructure Solutions, industry sources said Thursday. Seoul-based investment house IPM Asset Management said Thursday it has created the vehicle for Korean investors, allowing them to implement a coinvestment strategy alongside BlackRock’s fund, dubbed Global Infrastructure Solutions 4. Thr

Blockchain company AMAXG said on Thursday it has entered the nonfungible token platform business to trade unique and noninterchangeable data stored on digital ledgers. AMAXG said it recently opened a digital asset NFT transaction platform named BIZA-UVIT, and built strategic partnerships with the Federation of Artistic and Cultural Organizations of Korea (FACO), the Global Medical Aesthetic Exchange Association (GMAEA) and the Korea Blockchain Enterprise Promotion Association. FACO plans to di