The leading bank in Korea announced on July 22 that it would make a full-fledged M&A service for SMEs by offering differentiated service from financial consulting to acceptance financing. (image: Dwonderwall/flickr)
SEOUL, July 24 (Korea Bizwire) – Shinhan Bank plans to offer professional and systematic consulting service dealing in mergers and acquisitions of small- and medium-sized companies (SMEs) by prospecting for companies with M&A intentions.
The leading bank in Korea announced on July 22 that it would make a full-fledged M&A service for SMEs by offering differentiated service from financial consulting to acceptance financing. Its services will include expertise consulting on management, strategy, financing and management succession, structured financing, brokerage and other M&A related services.
An official at the bank said, “Currently commercial banks are playing a limited role in the M&A market such as acceptance financing. Due to their limited roles, SMEs could not easily find suitable experts in M&A who can offer credible M&A consulting and counseling from the viewpoints of SME owners.”
According to the bank, most of SME owners have M&A needs such as honorable retirement, acquisition of technology and production facilities, and management succession. Especially, the cases of M&A are rising as alternative plans for family business inheritance as they are considering M&A in the management succession process to their children. There are several causes for M&A in the process such as the children’s denial for the succession, securing of business permanence and the burden of inheritance taxes.
The bank, which has had experience in SME M&A business by offering counseling on management succession and making successful deals since 2010, decided to expand the business, reckoning it would be a niche market in which the bank can show comparative advantage over the foreign investment banks.
The Shinhan Bank Official said, “Along with the establishment of the task force for the SME M&A, we are developing M&A deal making program accumulating related know-how. In the long term, we will foster M&A experts in our bank to revitalize SME M&As in Korea.”
By John Choi (johnchoi@koreabizwire.com)
