Financial Services Commission chairman Shin Je-yoon has reaffirmed that the government will find a new owner for Woori Financial Group by 2014.
The FSC chief picked the much-disputed privatization of Woori Financial Group as his do-or-resign financial agenda.
“Our plan at this point is to fix the new owner by the end of 2014, although we may need more time for the rest of the legal paperwork,” Shin told reporters on Saturday.
He stressed that the sale of Woori Financial was currently “headed toward” the slit-and-sell method. The original block sales method had failed three times in the past 10 years.
“Our goal is to make and offer what the market wants. The answer lies in the market,” he said, suggesting one probable option is to dissemble Woori Financial Group and sell its local banks ― Kyongnam Bank and Kwangju Bank for instance ― first.
Then the remaining block, including Woori Bank, could be put to sale. This way leaves buyers with fewer burdens financially and legally, he said, since current financial law was highly demanding on a financial group’s acquisition of another financial group.
Shin pointed out that it was worth questioning if the financial group system was in fact effective.
“On the basic level, we came up with the existing financial group system because, at that time, the bundle (group) worked better for us to pour public money.”
However, Shin added that the block-sale method was not totally abandoned. Merger is also a valid option, he said, as long as the government ends up with zero share of Woori Financial.
The FSC head said restructuring the financial policy system “gives him a headache,” acknowledging that the FSC had not fixed much about institutional integration and the functional restructuring. The outcome may not come out until August, he said.
Shin also stated that the launch of state-controlled ship-finance corporation seemed difficult due to regulations imposed by the World Trade Organization.
By Chung Joo-won (
joowonc@heraldcorp.com)
