SEOUL, May 22 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean shares breached the 2,300-point mark for the first time ever as foreign investors scooped up major tech stocks amid sound corporate earnings, bucking overnight gains on Wall Street, analysts said. The Korean won sharply rose against the U.S. dollar. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) [...]
SEOUL, May 18 (Korea Bizwire) – Citibank Korea, the local unit of U.S. banking giant Citigroup, said Wednesday that it will convert almost all nonregular workers on its payroll into regular employees by the end of this year. Citibank Korea said the beneficiaries include about 300 tellers and other workers with low wages, which account for 8.5 percent of its total staff. Bank CEO Park Jin-hei said the agenda to change [...]
SEOUL, May 17 (Korea Bizwire) – Foreign ownership of stocks traded on South Korea’s secondary stock market has reached a fresh high on expectations the country’s new government may take steps to boost smaller firms, data showed Tuesday. As of Thursday, offshore investors held 23.3 trillion won (US$20.8 billion) worth of shares traded on the [...]
SEOUL, May 15 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s household loans extended by banks rose 9.8 percent in April from a year earlier due to increased mortgages, central bank data showed Monday. Outstanding household loans from lenders came to 718.6 trillion won (US$637 billion) as of end-April, compared with 654.3 trillion won from a year earlier, according [...]
SEOUL, May 14 (Korea Bizwire) – Penny stocks have been losers on South Korea’s main bourse this year, while stocks with higher prices have tended to be more profitable, data showed Sunday. According to the main bourse operator Korea Exchange, 19 stocks with a price tag below 1,000 won (US$0.89) posted a loss of 4.04 [...]
SEOUL, May 12 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s national pension fund has earned nearly 13 trillion won (US$11.5 billion) from stock investments this year thanks to the bullish stock market, data showed Friday. According to the data by market tracker FnGuide and industry sources, the value of 278 stocks, of which the National Pension Service [...]
SEOUL, May 12 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea has imposed a levy on financial firms’ non-deposit foreign borrowing to ease volatility in capital flows, the central banks said Thursday. The Bank of Korea said 66 financial companies, including 17 local banks and 34 branches of foreign lenders, are required to pay 0.1 percent of their [...]
SEOUL, May 10 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of foreign residents who took out life insurance policies here topped 200,000 in 2015, with their subscriptions rising at an annual rate of 16 percent over the past five years, industry data showed Sunday. According to the data compiled by the Korea Insurance Development Institute, a total [...]
SEOUL, May 10 (Korea Bizwire) – Transactions by South Korea’s private equity firms slipped 30.4 percent on year in 2016 amid a lack of mega buyout deals, government data showed Tuesday. Local private equity groups invested a total of 8.9 trillion won (US$7.8 billion) last year, compared with deals worth 12.8 trillion won in 2016, [...]
SEOUL, May 2 (Korea Bizwire) — Nearly 90 percent of financial firms worldwide said their businesses are at risk from rapidly expanding fintech rivals and they fear losing revenue to the financial innovators, according to a new study released on Monday, in the latest sign of the growing influence of financial technology, known as fintech. [...]