SEOUL, Nov. 9 (Korea Bizwire) — Foreign investors turned net buyers of South Korean stocks in October despite continued global monetary tightening as they picked up oversold shares, central bank data showed Wednesday. Foreigners’ stock investment funds logged a net inflow of US$2.49 billion in October, swinging from the previous month’s net outflow of $1.65 [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 8 (Korea Bizwire) — A number of South Korea’s credit issuers and credit finance firms are downsizing their auto installment financing offerings due to the difficulty in raising funds in a prolonged high interest rate. For these companies, installment interest rates for new cars (based on an installment period of 60 months) stood [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean insurer Heungkuk Life Insurance Co. said Monday it plans to exercise a call option for long-term hybrid bonds issued in 2017, reversing its previous decision to delay the buy-back. “We apologize for causing turmoil in the financial market with our previous decision,” Heungkuk Life Insurance said in [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 7 (Korea Bizwire) – Foreign currency-denominated securities sold by South Korean financial institutions have taken a big hit from a local insurer’s recent decision not to exercise a call option for long-term hybrid bonds, which is widely feared to negatively affect their future overseas issues. A week ago, second-tier insurer Heungkuk Life Insurance [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean online lender K-Bank said Monday its net profit hit a record high in the third quarter on higher operational efficiency and stayed in the black for five straight quarters. Net profit stood at 25.6 billion won (US$18.2 million) in the July-September period, up 52.4 percent from a [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — Even during the week when American big tech firms reported disappointing third-quarter results and suffered a sharp decline in stock prices, South Korean investors net bought a substantial amount of their stocks, data showed Sunday. Meta Platforms Inc., the operator of Facebook, ranked first in terms of net buying [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — SK Group, South Korea’s second-largest conglomerate by assets, is set to issue its first commercial papers (CPs), indicating that even large companies are having difficulty raising funds through the issuance of corporate bonds. SK Inc., the holding company of SK Group, plans to issue three-year and five-year maturity CPs [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 2 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean online lender Kakao Bank said Wednesday its third-quarter net profit hit a record high this year on growth in interest revenue. Consolidated net profit stood at 78.7 billion won (US$55.4 million) in the July-September period, up 51.39 percent from a profit of 52 billion won a year [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 1 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s five large financial groups decided Tuesday to inject a large amount of liquidity into the financial market to help ease its recent volatility. The decision to pump 95 trillion won (US$66.5 billion) into the market by year-end came after the country’s top financial regulator met with the [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 27 (Korea Bizwire) — Kakao Bank, the internet-only bank under mobile platform service provider Kakao Corp., on Thursday said it plans to enhance its banking services for the self-employed business, seeking to expand its customer base. The lender has posted fast growth with a focus on household banking since its launch of banking [...]