SEOUL, March 12 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s central bank unexpectedly slashed the base rate to a record low of 1.75 percent on Thursday, putting efforts to shore up growth on top of concerns over persistent household debt growth. The rate cut is the first since October, when the Bank of Korea (BOK) brought down the [...]
WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 (Korea Bizwire) — The International Monetary Fund predicted Friday that South Korea’s economy would expand 3.7 percent this year, down 0.3 percentage point from its earlier forecast. The forecast was included in the agency’s “Global Prospects and Policy Challenges” report submitted to a meeting of finance ministers and central bank chiefs of [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s foreign exchange reserves slipped in January from a month earlier as the currency value of the euro and the British pound weakened, data showed Wednesday. The country’s foreign exchange reserves reached US$362.2 billion as of the end of last month, falling $1.4 billion from December, according to Bank [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 27 (Korea Bizwire) – Koreans make more than half of their payments by credit cards in terms of volume, almost twice as much as Americans. According to a Bank of Korea report entitled “Koreans’ Usage of Payment Means in 2014 and Their Implications” analyzing payment usage in terms of volume by interviewing 2,500 adults [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean companies saw the lowest on-year sales growth in more than five years in the third quarter of this year as unfavorable currency exchange rates and weakening oil prices hit exporters, central bank data showed Friday, raising concerns over their flagging growth potential. Sales growth at 1,670 local [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — More than 30 percent of households said they took on new debt within the past two years since 2012. This is mainly due to the Bank of Korea‘s benchmark interest rate cuts in two occasions this year and the government’s measures to relax the regulation on the loan-to-value ratio and [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 6 (Korea Bizwire) — As the Bank for International Settlements regulation on the capital adequacy ratio is tightened, more and more banks increasingly rely on the issuing of contingent convertible bonds, or CoCo bonds, for their preferred means of procuring capital. That’s because the issuing company doesn’t need to count shares in its calculation of [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 4 (Korea Biwire) — A total of 12 domestic and international banks including Shinhan Bank and Bank of Communications have been selected as “market makers” for won-yuan direct transactions. The Bank of Korea said on November 3 that it designated 12 banks as market makers as part of a policy measure to encourage transactions between the [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 3 (Korea Bizwire) – A typical excuse by large corporations that “we have no cash to invest” turns out one of the biggest lies they make. Even amid the prolonged recession and worsening financial results, top conglomerates are swamped with cash in their coffers. A study said the cash balance held by Korea’s top-ten business [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 31 (Korea Bizwire) – A central bank study said the combined loss of banks would be in the range of 14.5 trillion won if three top “most exposed” business groups were gone insolvent at the same time. According to a report on insolvency risk stress test on major conglomerates published by the Bank of Korea on [...]