SEOUL, April 7 (Korea Bizwire) — Foreign direct investment (FDI) pledges to South Korea jumped 14.9 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier to reach the highest first-quarter figure ever, data showed Thursday. The country received US$5.45 billion worth of FDI commitments in the January-March period, compared with $4.74 billion logged a year [...]
SEOUL, April 6 (Korea Bizwire) — Lee Jae-yong, the chief of Samsung Group, South Korea’s top conglomerate, remained the country’s richest stockholder in the first quarter of the year despite a fall in the value of his shareholdings, a corporate tracker said Wednesday. Stock holdings of Lee, vice chairman of global tech titan Samsung Electronics [...]
SEOUL, April 6 (Korea Bizwire) — K-Bank, a South Korean internet-only bank, said Wednesday that it garnered more than 7.5 million customers in five years of its launch thanks to a steep increase in mid- and low-credit loans and the rising popularity of mobile banking. K-Bank has enjoyed brisk business growth in the recent years, [...]
SEOUL, April 5 (Korea Bizwire) — Rising concerns are alluding to cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea receiving higher commissions than securities firms despite issues in the stability of transactions. Rep. Yoo Gyeong-joon of the People Power Party received reports from the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service that four major cryptocurrency exchanges in [...]
SEOUL, April 5 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean online banks’ household loans grew nearly 8 percent in the first three months of this year amid decreased lending by offline rivals, industry sources said Tuesday. Outstanding household lending by the three online banks — Kakao Bank, K-Bank and Toss Bank — came to 36.14 trillion won [...]
PAJU, April 4 (Korea Bizwire) — U.S. investor Jim Rogers has been tapped to serve as an adviser on inter-Korean cooperation projects for Paju, a South Korean city near the border with North Korea, officials said Monday. Rogers plans to visit Paju, 30 kilometers north of Seoul, on Wednesday to sign an agreement to serve [...]
SEOUL, April 1 (Korea Bizwire) — Investors in their 20s and 30s deposited a total of 19.04 trillion won (US$15.6 billion) in South Korea’s major cryptocurrency exchanges last year, data showed Thursday. The Financial Supervisory Service reported that the five major cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea were holding investments of 52.8 trillion won as of [...]
SEOUL, March 30 (Korea Bizwire) — Banks in South Korea continued to reduce the number of their offline branches in 2021 as part of efforts to reduce costs amid the expanded use of mobile banking, data showed Wednesday. The number of brick-and-mortar branches run by local banks came to 6,904 as of end-2021, down 311 [...]
SEOUL, March 30 (Korea Bizwire) – The Seoul city government on Wednesday imposed an eight-month business suspension on HDC Hyundai Development Co. over a deadly building demolition project that claimed nine lives in June of last year. The order was issued at the request of the land ministry following an investigation into the accident in [...]
SEOUL, March 30 (Korea Bizwire) — Asset management firms in South Korea saw their 2021 combined net earnings jump 67.1 percent from a year earlier thanks to a rise in commission revenue, data showed Wednesday. The combined net income of 348 firms came to 2.16 trillion won (US$2.01 billion) last year compared with 1.3 trillion [...]