SEOUL, July 4 (Korea Bizwire) – 8PERCENT, a P2P (peer-to-peer) lending company, revealed on July 4 that 30-something men who live in metropolitan areas are their primary investors. P2P lending refers to a system where lenders and borrowers make direct monetary exchanges with one another. A P2P lender evaluates the creditability of potential borrowers applying for [...]
SEOUL, June 27 (Korea Bizwire) – Local investors are increasingly beginning to lean toward the U.S. dollar and other safer assets, such as short-term deposits, market data showed Monday, following Britain’s unprecedented vote to quit the European Union (EU) that has apparently left long-term commitments riskier, as well as unattractive, amid record low interest rates. [...]
SEOUL, June 10 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean investors are piling into high-yield corporate bonds with relatively high risk in search of bigger returns as the country’s interest rates are at rock bottom, sources said Friday. Trading of these so-called mezzanine bonds have recently been active as investors are drawn to debt that offers a higher [...]
SEOUL, June 2 (Korea Bizwire) – “The consumer market in Korea is high developed, so I believe Korea’s services sector is the most promising,” stated Stefan Zuschke, the president of BC Partners. “If I invested in a Korean business, I would invest in one of Korea’s IT corporations,” claimed VSS executive director Christopher Russell. And [...]
SEOUL, June 1 (Korea Bizwire) – A Korean version of the NASDAQ Private Market is expected to launch before the end of the year. According to industry analysts, the Korea Financial Investment Association (KFIA) plans to present what it calls an ‘over-the-counter transaction platform for professional investors’. It plans to revitalize the pre-IPO market by providing [...]
SEOUL, May 27 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean music company YG Entertainment on Friday said it has attracted 100 billion won (US$85 million) in investment from the Chinese online giant Tencent and mobile ticketing service, Beijing Weiying Technology Co. YG said its CEO Yang Min-suk will sign an investment deal with Suman Wang, who is in [...]
SEOUL, May 17 (Korea Bizwire) – Shares in Samsung C&T Corp. have been on a downward curve since September when a merger of two major Samsung Group affiliates generated the construction-to-fashion holding company for Samsung Group, analysts said Tuesday. They attributed the fall largely to the company’s drop in overseas orders and sluggish domestic demand for [...]
SEOUL, May 16 (Korea Bizwire) – Foreign investors bought a net 2 trillion won (US$1.7 billion) worth of South Korean stocks last month due to a growing appetite for emerging-market assets, the country’s financial regulator said Monday. Foreigners continued to buy Korean stocks for the second consecutive month in April, bringing their accumulated holdings of [...]
SEOUL, May 10 (Korea Bizwire) – CoCo bonds, or contingent convertible bonds, are fixed-income instruments that are equity-convertible in cases of pre-specified trigger events. Despite their liability-like properties, they are classified as assets, which is prompting many banks to issue CoCo bonds as means of expanding capital. So technically, they’re asset-convertible debt. Major Korean banks, [...]
SEJONG, May 10 (Korea Bizwire) – Sluggish global investment stemming from the 2008 global financial crisis has dragged down South Korea’s economic growth by 0.21 percentage point on an annual basis, a report said Tuesday. Global investment was hit hard by the global financial crisis as its portion against the world’s gross demand fell by [...]