Cash withdrawn from financial accounts on rise for household expenses, investment

KDB, IBK, KB Kookmin accredited to start business in ASEAN state

Attention is centered on what is poised to become the only initial public offering deal in April, as investors are hinging on a change in market tides. Starting Monday, Sencoretech -- a Seoul-based engineering firm dedicated to manufacturing steel structure -- will go on a two-day institutional investor tranche to confirm the IPO price, estimated to be at least 27.16 billion won ($22.35 million). Samsung Securities is a lead underwriter for the IPO on the development bourse Kosdaq. This comes

South Korea’s midcap buyout fund VIG Partners said Friday it plans to acquire the nation’s leading funeral service firm Preedlife. While neither the acquisition price nor the amount of stake were disclosed, the transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2020. This comes amid the private equity firm’s move to carry out a bolt-on strategy, under which its existing portfolio firms Jounlife and Preedlife will be combined to become the biggest funeral goods and servi

Shinhan Card said Thursday it has launched a facial recognition-based payment system that replaces the use of plastic cards for purchases. Branded as Shinhan Face Pay, the new payment system is the first service of its kind here, the local credit card issuer said. To authorize payment, customers take a photo of their faces and a kiosk then matches their facial information with the one registered in advance at Shinhan Bank’s local branches. “As long as customers register their ph

The South Korean branches of foreign banks held a combined 305.2 trillion won ($250.9 billion) in assets last year, 11.8 percent increase from the previous year, mainly due to derivative products and securities, latest data showed Thursday. The increase was mainly attributable to their derivative product assets which rose by 14.3 trillion won, according to the Financial Supervisory Service in its report on 36 foreign banks here. Their securities and cash and deposits also increased by 7.7 tril

Togo Communication, a local PR agency based in Seoul, will hire new employees by conducting video interviews online as part of efforts to participate in nationwide campaign to contain COVID-19 virus, the company said Thursday. The agency will continue so-called “untact” job interviews with applicants for internships and accountant executive posts, until the government declares an end of the pandemic. “Even though we face the danger of COVID-19, we decided to conduct untact j

Hotel Shilla, a South Korean operator of luxury hotels and duty-free shops, has closed a $121 million transaction to buy a 44 percent stake in US duty-free shop operator Travel Retail Group Holdings, known for the in-flight retailing service 3Sixty Duty Free, a filing showed Wednesday. The deal, closed Tuesday, allowed the hotel and duty-free unit under Samsung to become the second-largest shareholder after 3Sixty Chairman Bernard Klepach. It marks Hotel Shilla’s first investment in a No

Small business owners have increasingly turned to nonbanking lending despite the higher-interest loans to withstand the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, data showed Tuesday. According to the Korea Federation of Community Credit Cooperatives, a mutual financial institution, its banks extended emergency rescue loans worth 15.5 billion won ($12.67 million) to coronavirus-hit small business owners without credit ratings between March 11 and Friday. The demand for loans from KFCC

The Bank of Korea (BOK) said Tuesday that it will offer $4.41 billion to local banks this week in its second round of dollar funding using its bilateral currency swap arrangement with the US Fed that is designed to help prevent a foreign exchange liquidity crunch. The central bank held an online auction to provide up to $8.5 billion in seven-day debt and 84-day loans. Bids undershot the BOK target of $7 billion in 84-day loans and $1.5 billion in seven-day loans. "A total of $4.41 billi

The state-run Export-Import Bank of Korea said Monday that it intends to create two funds worth a total of 400 billion won ($325.2 million) to help South Korean health care companies go global. The money will go to Korean companies devoted to immunotherapy, gene therapy, health care systems, diagnostic kits and medical devices. It will be used to support them in exporting more products, clinching more overseas investment and expanding to foreign markets. Of the total, Eximbank Korea has comm

The National Health Insurance Service unveiled on Monday plans to commit up to 1.4 trillion won ($1.14 billion) to its first alternative investment in history as an institutional investor. It plans to select two lead partners to manage the assets for four years, officials said. This comes as the South Korean state agency, with some 20 trillion won worth of assets under management, moves to shift away from a conservative portfolio and turn to alternative assets, ranging from real estate to

South Korea’s 10 financial holding groups’ combined net profit increased 31 percent last year, data showed Monday, but the upward trend is unlikely to continue next year. According to the watchdog Financial Supervisory Service, the combined net profit of Shinhan, KB, NH Nonghyup, Hana, Woori, BNK, DGB, JB, Korea Investment and Meritz came to 15.2 trillion won ($12.3 billion) in 2019. The figure was up nearly 3.6 trillion won or 31 percent on-year. The corresponding figure for 201

South Korea’s foreign exchange reserves last month posted the sharpest drop in over a decade due to the government’s intervention in the foreign exchange market and the strengthened US dollar value, the central bank said Friday. As of the end of March, the nation’s foreign exchange reserves stood at $400.21 billion, down $8.96 billion from a month earlier, according to the Bank of Korea. It fell by the largest margin since November in 2008 when the global financial crisis wa

A bond deal by South Korea’s biggest airline showed that while carriers pummeled by the coronavirus pandemic can still sell debt, they will need to pay a steep price. The fee Korean Air Lines paid underwriters to issue won notes jumped to a record 1.157percent, four times what it was charged in a similar deal in September. And an unusually numerous 15 sales managers took part in the offering this week of 600 billion won ($490 million) of debt backed by sales of future passenger tickets, a