Eight out of 10 young Koreans are currently investing in stocks, funds, cryptocurrencies and other assets, and their main purpose behind making such investments is to buy a home, a survey showed Thursday. According to the survey conducted by insurance agency Rich Planner Consulting Co. on 1,000 Koreans in their 20s and 30s, 88.2 percent of them answered they are investing in stocks. Nearly 35 pe...

Shinhan Bank said Thursday it has opened an office in Hungary, becoming the first South Korean commercial lender to enter the central European country. The flagship lender under the nation’s No. 1 banking group by assets said it was granted the license to operate by the Hungarian National Bank in September and opened the office Tuesday. It also marked Shinhan’s latest overseas market entry sinc...

US-based investment manager BlackRock has become the third-largest shareholder of energy services company Hanwha Solutions, a filing showed Wednesday. BlackRock’s 11 affiliated entities were holding a combined 5.08 percent stake in Hanwha Solutions -- which is dedicated to petrochemicals, advanced materials and solar energy -- as of Friday, according to the disclosure filed with the Financial Su...

South Korean mobile payment app operator Kakao Pay embarked on a two-day book building process targeting institutional investors Wednesday, following delays due to local authorities’ requests. The result will determine at which price a share of Kakao Pay, the Ant Group-backed financial technology firm, would be offered, as well as the proceeds Kakao Pay will be able to attract through the initia...

Legally suggested brokerage fees were lowered around 50 percent starting Tuesday, over implementation of the related law revised to reduce burden on soaring housing prices. For those selling or buying a house worth more than 1 billion won, real estate agents can receive commissions up to 5 million won, 4 million won down from up to 9 million won, according to new guidelines. For “jeonse” and mon...

Stock-secured borrowing by the families of South Korea’s conglomerate founders amounted to almost 5 trillion won ($4.3 billion), led by managerial transfers and business restructuring, data showed Monday. According to local market analysis company Leaders Index, as of October the nation’s 29 family-controlled conglomerates had received a combined 4.82 trillion won worth of loans backed by stocks...

South Korea’s Hana Bank on Monday said it has teamed up with the nation’s top automakers Hyundai Motor and Kia alongside fintech startup Finda to develop financial services and products tied to connected car technologies. A connected car refers to a car equipped with internet access, usually a wireless local area network. This allows the car to share internet access and data with other devices i...

Seoul-based impact investment fund sees ‘tremendous’ opportunity in climate technology in 10 years, aims to build foreign deal pipelines

South Korea‘s major banks are set to loosen control on extension of “jeonse” loans for homes, but their tightened grip over personal credit loans will continue under pressure from financial authorities, industry sources said Sunday. Jeonse is a housing lease system unique to Korea whereby tenants pay a lump-sum deposit instead of monthly rent on a two-year contract. NH NongHyup Bank, which in A...

South Korean private equity firm STIC Investments is poised to carry out a backdoor listing to start trading on the domestic stock market in December, a filing showed Sunday. Following the move, STIC Investments will become the first Seoul-based private equity investment manager to be listed in three years. Seoul is home to high-profile buyout powerhouses including MBK Partners, Hahn & Co. and I...

The state-run Korea Development Bank extended or guaranteed loans worth a combined 10.3 trillion won ($8.7 billion) for fossil fuel projects in the last decade, data showed Friday, reflecting growing concerns about greenwashing in the nation’s financial sector. From 2011 to 2020, the KDB extended loans worth a total of 6.9 trillion won and guaranteed a further 3.3 trillion won worth of loans for...

Sydney-based investment manager Alceon has raised a combined 55 billion won ($46.3 million) of capital from a South Korean institutional investor for its nonbank loan strategies designed to finance Australian real estate development projects. Alceon‘s senior debt vehicle, named Alceon Australian Real Estate Corporate Senior Loan Fund, received capital from Korean allocator ABL Life Insurance fro...

South Korea’s central bank said Thursday it has decided to join a global movement of financial regulators to set up standards for stablecoins, saying it would adopt the rules to the local market once they are introduced. Stablecoins are a form of cryptocurrency designed to have a stable value tied to traditional government-backed currencies, or to a commodity such as gold, to dodge the volatilit...

Four metaverse-themed exchange-traded funds went listed for the first time on the country’s stock markets on Wednesday, betting on growing interest in the new IT platform. The four ETFs are KB Asset Management’s KBSTAR iSelect Metaverse, NH Amundi Asset Management’s Hanaro Fn K-Metaverse MZ, Mirae Asset Global Investment’s Tiger Fn Metaverse, and Samsung Asset Management’s KODEX K-Metaverse Acti...

South Korean banks' household loans grew at a faster pace in September from a month earlier despite the government's toughened controls on lending, central bank data showed Wednesday. According to the Bank of Korea (BOK), outstanding bank loans to households came to 1,052.7 trillion won ($877.9 billion) as of the end of September, up 6.5 trillion won from the previous month. The figure is highe...