A South Korean court on Tuesday officially declared the bankruptcy of Optimus Asset Management, which had been mired in massive financial fraud leading to losses worth some 560 billion won ($415.8 million) for investors. The Seoul Bankruptcy Court declared the troubled asset manager bankrupt, citing its incapability to make payments due to its “heavy debt.” Optimus filed for bankruptcy with the...

SK Inc., the holding company of South Korea’s second-largest conglomerate SK Group, said it plans to buy back 200 billion won ($148 million) of its own shares, which is equivalent to some 1 percent of the market cap, the firm said Tuesday. The firm’s board of directors on Aug. 30 approved the share repurchase to enhance shareholders’ value. It marks the first step to implement the shareholders r...

South Korean banking groups have been picking up the pace of expansion in Vietnam, eyeing financial clout in one of the fastest growing Asian economies. Shinhan Financial Group, South Korea’s No. 2 bank by total assets, is at the forefront of the movement. Its flagship commercial bank’s Vietnam subsidiary, Shinhan Bank Vietnam opened three more branches in a single day on July 29. Shinhan Bank V...

South Korea’s financial authorities and brokerages on Monday warned of volatilities stemming from US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech at Jackson Hole last week, with the private sector expressing more skepticism towards the associated risks. Powell on Friday delivered a hawkish remark saying that the rising interest rates will cause “some pain” to the US economy and that the US Fe...

Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong revealed that he recently went on a summer vacation with his mother for the first time in his life, local reports said Friday. The notoriously private Samsung heir told his employees that his six-day trip with his mother involved watching a lot of TV shows. The 54-year-old added that he watched dramas she recommended and once stayed in for the entir...

South Korea’s deputy finance policymaker was identified as the civil servant with the highest-value personal assets in the country, including shares worth some 20 billion won ($15 million) in a family business, a government ethics committee said Friday. Financial Services Commission Vice Chairman Kim So-young’s net assets – including real estate, stocks and savings -- amounted to a total of 29...

South Korea is watching closely a verdict set to be delivered by an international dispute settlement body for a decadelong dispute between the government and US private equity firm Lone Star next week. The International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes’ verdict on Aug. 31 will come almost 10 years after Lone Star filed a suit against the Korean government in November 2012, seeking $4...

South Korea’s KB Financial Group on Thursday launched its new premium private banking and asset management brand to better cater to its wealthy clients. “KB Gold & Wise the First” plans to adopt a “Credit Suisse-like” model in which private bankers and asset managers from KB Kookmin Bank and KB Securities and experts from areas such as investment, tax, real estate and trusts are brought together...

South Korean technology firms are gearing up to launch new services where users can compare different insurance products on their platforms, but the move has been met with strong resistance from traditional agents, sources said Wednesday. Financial authorities earlier this week approved local big tech firms such as Naver and Kakao to launch test-runs of their new “insurance agent” services start...

South Korean exports to China has jumped 162 times since the two countries forged diplomatic ties in 1992, far more than the overall outbound shipments of Asia’s fourth-largest economy that grew ninefold in the same period, data showed Tuesday. The data comes amid growing concerns of Korea’s increasing trade dependence on the world’s No. 2 economy, with the demand for memory chips having become ...

Cryptocurrency airdrop, which refers to a marketing stunt involving sending coins or tokens to wallet addresses, is legally subjected to gift tax, officials said Monday. The Ministry of Economy and Finance’s Tax and Custom’s Office said that crypto issuers delivering coins or tokens to wallets of traders for free is subjected to the nation’s gift tax under the Inheritance Tax and Gift Tax Act. ...

Posco Group Chairman Choi Jeong-woo recently touted battery materials as a key growth driver during his meeting with investors in Singapore, the steelmaker’s holding group said Sunday. The pledge came as Choi briefed officials from US-based investment giant BlackRock and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation – a state-run investment agency – of Posco’s performance so far in manageme...

South Korea’s reliance on China for semiconductor exports jumped nearly 13-fold in the last two decades and Seoul needs to take action to resolve any associated risks, a report said Sunday. Semiconductor exports made up 39.7 percent of Asia’s fourth-largest economy’s total exports to China last year, a surge from 3.2 percent in 2000, said the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a major busin...

South Korean tech giant Kakao Corp. has decided to scrap its plan to sell some 10 percent of its ride-hailing arm to a private equity fund, the firm said Thursday. It currently holds a 57.5 percent stake. The latest decision comes as the result of a monthslong tug-of-war between the company and the firm’s union. The union has repeatedly asked the firm to halt the plan after Kakao in June announc...

South Korean retail investors have been bagging up overseas exchange traded-funds in recent weeks as the global stock market has been struggling under bear market signals, data showed Tuesday. Retail investors interested in overseas investments have added more high-return, high-risk ETFs to their portfolios, seeking to profit from the volatile global market. Of the top 10 overseas investments f...