SEOUL, Oct. 20 (Korea Bizwire) — Major South Korean lender KB Kookmin Bank said Wednesday it has acquired an additional 30 percent stake in its Cambodian microfinance unit. The stake purchase came after KB Kookmin took over a 70 percent stake in Prasac Microfinance Institution Ltd. in Cambodia for US$603 million in April 2020. With [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 20 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of overseas stock accounts held by South Korean retail investors jumped 74 percent in the first half of the year from six months earlier amid their brisk investment in foreign shares, data showed Wednesday. Local individual investors held about 3.31 million overseas stock accounts as of end-June, [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 20 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean brokerage houses have sharply lowered their third-quarter earnings outlook for major listed firms amid rising inflation and other negatives, a market tracker said Wednesday. The combined net profit forecast for 168 major listed firms came to 29.7 trillion won (US$25.2 billion) for the July-September period as of [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean stocks are likely to move in a tight range next week as investors weigh the outlook for third-quarter corporate earnings and the Federal Reserve’s signal over tapering of its timeline for stimulus, analysts said Saturday. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) closed at 3,015.06 points [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 14 (Korea Bizwire) — Shares of South Korea’s two chipmakers — Samsung Electronics Co. and SK hynix Inc. — have withered in recent days despite upbeat news that they are going to post record quarterly sales backed by brisk memory chip businesses. In its third-quarter earnings guidance released earlier this month, Samsung Electronics [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 8 (Korea Bizwire) — Viva Republica Inc., the company behind popular South Korean financial app Toss, said Friday it will acquire a 60 percent stake in VCNC, the operator of ride-hailing service Tada, in a move to enter the country’s competitive mobility market. The fintech-focused company said it signed a three-way memorandum of [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 6 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s internet banking services continued to grow in the first half, with the number of users and daily transactions rising to new highs, central bank data showed Wednesday. The number of internet banking users, including mobile banking, came to 186.5 million as of end-June, up 5.6 percent from [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 6 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean financial companies’ overseas units saw their earnings jump more than 27 percent in the first half of the year despite the coronavirus pandemic, a corporate tracker said Wednesday. According to CEO Score, 222 overseas subsidiaries of major banks and other financial institutions posted a combined net income [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s stock prices fell 6.91 percent on-quarter in the third quarter due to uncertainty over the U.S. tapering of asset purchases, marking the first quarterly decline since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, data showed Sunday. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) ended at 3,068.82 on [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 28 (Korea Bizwire) — The Bank of Korea (BOK) said Tuesday it will expand its purchase of stocks and bonds related to environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns, in a move to help transform South Korea to a greener economy. As of June, the BOK had purchased US$7.12 billion worth of ESG stocks [...]