U.S. stocks tumbled, erasing more than half of yesterday’s rally, while European shares slid and Treasuries rose for a third day amid concern the economic recovery is faltering and the debt crisis is spreading to France. The euro weakened against 11 of 16 major peers, dropping 1.1 percent to $1.4220. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index sank 2.4 percent at 9:40 a.m. in New York following the gauge’s ...

Lee urges close cooperation with foreign governments Seoul stocks rebounded in wobbly steps and advanced a tiny 0.27 percent to close at 1,806.24 Wednesday, tracking overnight recoveries in the U.S. and Europe on the Federal Reserve’s pledge to keep money flow cheap for the next two years. The benchmark KOSPI gained almost 3 percent within the first five minutes of trading but dipped back to 1,...

Dimmer U.S. economic outlook, rising inflation at home still pose risk As the U.S. Federal Reserve pledged to keep its benchmark interest rate at near zero through mid-2013 helping Wall Street to stage a rebound Tuesday, investors in Seoul also seemed less nervous. Still, a bigger question remains: What will be the impact on the Korean economy? Even before the unprecedented downgrade of the U....

The possibility that Korea will fail to meet its inflation target of 4 percent for 2011 increased as the European debt crisis continued to hit local financial markets. The Bank of Korea, which has pushed for tightening monetary policies in an attempt to curb consumer prices, is unlikely to raise the monthly benchmark interest rate at its committee meeting slated for Thursday. Despite high consu...

Companies looking for signs of prolonged recession in Europe, U.S. Large Korean companies struggled to appear unfazed but many, especially those dependent on overseas sales, seemed to be rethinking their business strategies in the aftermath of a financial shock stemming from the U.S. Hyundai Motor is currently said to be raking the data it received on the U.S. economy to search for new ways to ...

Shinhan Bank, under the customer-oriented management policies of CEO Suh Jin-won, has been diversifying its financial products. The commercial bank’s couple-customized products offer higher interest rates to those who register as couples through the lender’s smartphone application. Shinhan has released the “Couple Savings Account” and the “Couple Installment Account” to better cope with the you...

South Korea’s money supply grew at the slowest pace in more than seven years in June as liquidity offered by the government decreased despite brisk bank lending, the central bank said Wednesday. The country’s M2, a narrow measure of its money supply, reached 1,697.2 trillion won ($1.57 trillion) in June, up 3 percent from a year earlier, according to the Bank of Korea. The June reading eased fr...