The deal to sell state-run Woori Finance Holdings Co. is estimated to fetch at least 5.42 trillion won ($4.85 billion), the financial regulator said Wednesday, amid the government's push to wrap up the long-pending privatization of the banking giant.
The Financial Services Commission (FSC), the country's top financial regulator in charge of the Woori sale, said the estimated value has grown by 1.9 trillion won from the figure it came up with a year earlier.
The latest sale value was estimated based on the banking group's closing share price of 11,800 won per share as of end-December 2012. It closed at 11,350 won on Tuesday.
The estimate came as the FSC rolled out its plan in late June to sell the No. 1 banking firm in South Korea by the end of next year, in its fourth bid to retrieve the public fund it injected to salvage the banking sector in the aftermath of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
Woori Finance was created in 2001 by merging five troubled banks at that time with 9.4 trillion won worth of taxpayers' money, of which some 4.88 trillion won has so far been recovered by the FSC.
The state-run Korea Deposit Insurance Corp. owns the controlling stake of 56.97 percent in Woori Finance, or some 459 million shares.
The FSC plans to sell Woori Finance in three batches: the regional banks, brokerage and asset management, and Woori Bank units. The regulator posted an official sale notice for the brokerage part earlier this month, with others to be put up for a bidding at a time by early 2014. (Yonhap News)
