SEOUL, March 10 (Korea Bizwire) — Seoul attracted a record US$10.2 billion in foreign direct investment last year despite the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic, the city government said Wednesday. Last year was also the second consecutive year FDI in the capital city topped $10 billion, continuing an upward trend since 2017, according to [...]
SEOUL, March 9 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean vaccine maker SK Bioscience Co. on Tuesday kicked off a two-day public subscription for its initial public offering (IPO), seen as a high-profile share sale during the first half. SK Bioscience, a unit of South Korea’s No. 2 family-controlled conglomerate SK Group, has allowed individual investors to [...]
SEOUL, March 9 (Korea Bizwire) — Major global investment banks (IBs) have revised up their forecasts for South Korea’s 2021 economic growth for the third consecutive month amid growing expectations for a recovery, a report showed Tuesday. As of end-February, nine major global IBs, including Barclays, BoA-Merrill Lynch and Citi, forecast Asia’s fourth-largest economy to [...]
SEOUL, March 9 (Korea Bizwire) — The average daily transaction amount of cryptocurrencies is skyrocketing on the back of rising investment fever. The combined transaction amount of the nation’s four major cryptocurrency exchanges totaled 445 trillion won (US$389 billion) during the period from Jan. 1 to Feb. 25, far exceeding last year’s yearly total of [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 28 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean retail investors’ stock frenzy appears to be going strong with their net stock buying nearing 100 trillion won since January last year, industry data showed Sunday. According to the data, individual investors scooped up a net 99.24 trillion won (US$87.92 billion) since January 2020, with the monthly [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 23 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s economic growth rate ranked third among major economies across the globe in 2020 despite an on-year contraction due to the coronavirus pandemic, data showed Tuesday. Asia’s fourth-largest economy contracted 1 percent last year from a year earlier, but it posted the third-best performance among 15 major nations, [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 21 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean retail investors pared down their net buying of local stocks in February as the country’s key stock index traded in a tight range following a bull run, data showed Sunday. Retail investors snapped up a net 5.8 trillion won (US$5.24 billion) worth of stocks on the main [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — Gold prices in South Korea hit a 10-month low as hope of an economic recovery has made the bullion less attractive, data showed Friday. A gram of gold changed hands at 63,900 won (US$57.7) on the domestic market Friday, down 0.48 percent from the previous session, according to the [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — Major asset management companies in South Korea saw their earnings soar more than 40 percent in 2020 amid a bullish stock market, data showed Wednesday. The combined net income of the country’s 10 leading asset managers came to 381.6 billion won ($346 million) last year, up 44 percent from [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology are altering the landscape of the banking industry. This year, Shinhan Bank has set out on building infrastructure for ‘digital innovation banks’ where customer services will be replaced with AI technology. These offices will replace staff with AI bankers, who will be [...]