The Financial Supervisory Service is considering reprimanding major life insurance companies for breaches of accounting standards or irregular trading with their parent groups, officials said Sunday.The regulator conducted its investigation into eight major players last year and its possible sanction targets involve conglomerate-based players such as Samsung Life Insurance and Hanwha Life Insurance (then Korea Life).Some of the eight firms, including Kyobo Life, Tong Yang Life, Mirae Asset Life,

Major automakers in Korea effectively weathered negative factors involving the eurozone fiscal crisis last year, posting robust sales in the overseas market despite a slump at home.The five companies saw their collective sales climb by 5.65 percent in 2012 to about 8.19 million units, from 7.75 million units a year before.Hyundai Motor reported year-on-year sales growth of 8.6 percent. Its vehicle sales increased by about 350,000 units to around 4.4 million units ― an all-time high ― in 2012, fr

Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors saw their production of vehicles in the overseas market outstrip their domestic performance for the first time in 2012.In particular, the carmakers’ factories in the BRIC ― Brazil, Russia, India and China ― market significantly fueled their overseas manufacturing capacity, according to the Korea Automobile Manufacturers Association.KAMA data showed that Hyundai-Kia’s vehicle production in the four fast-growing economies surpassed 2 million units for the first 11 mont

SK Group said Tuesday that it posted record exports of more than $60 billion (64.8 trillion won) last year.The group said the ratio of exports to its total earnings reached 74 percent. Main exporters of its business units included SK Innovation, SK Energy, SK Global Chemical, SK Hynix, SK Lubricants and SKC.The figure means SK supplied more than 10 percent of the nation’s total exports in 2012, according to estimates by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy.In particular, four petrochemical-related

Fuel efficient vehicles with a diesel engine are projected to account for the majority of the total sales of 25 import brands this year.Diesel-powered import models are posting 50.8 percent, or about 61,000 units of foreign brands’ collective vehicle sales so far this year, while the ratio stood at 35.2 percent in 2011 and 25.4 percent in 2010.According to the Korea Automobile Importers & Distributors Association, the number of imported diesel car registrations continued to surge ― 36,931 units

Following is the second in a series of articles on President-elect Park Geun-hye’s key policies ― Ed.Revamping the conglomerate sector was one of main campaign issues among presidential hopefuls amid the widening profit gap among industries and irregularities by their mammoth business groups.Most candidates designated their proposed reform of chaebol ― Korea’s family-owned conglomerates ― “economic democratization.” While liberal candidates had pledged to overhaul family-owned ownership structur

The burden of small and mid-sized retailers will be eased as the Financial Supervisory Service has instructed credit card companies to slash their transaction service fees.Over the past few years, some 1 million retailers continued to demand credit card issuers to cut the service charge for consumers’ payments for goods with their credit cards.After talks between the regulator FSS and the credit card industry, about 2 million retailers will see service fees lowered to a level deemed more reasona