Low stock prices of the financial group could be hurdle for speeding up privatization


Policymakers will hold their first official meeting of this year at the end of this month to revitalize the government’s stalled project to privatize Woori Financial Group.

Newly formed members of the Public Fund Oversight Committee are scheduled to have a workshop on the state-controlled Woori Financial sale plan this month, according to government officials.

The six members of the PFOC, under the wing of the Financial Services Commission, are expected to discuss a variety of scenarios and preliminary steps before they unveil a fresh sale plan.

This will be the first time that the oversight committee officially reviews the Woori sale project since the new members were appointed to the post in September.

Over the past few years, financial authorities including the FSC have struggled in realizing the project to recoup taxpayers’ money by selling the government’s stake in Woori Financial.

Following a failure in their move to put the financial group up for auction during the second half of 2010, the PFOC and the FSC failed again to attract many powerful bidders in the first half of 2011, with unattractive sales terms blamed.

After they suspended the process in August 2011, the new oversight committee was formed in September.

Last November, some members of the National Policy Committee of the National Assembly called for the state-run Korea Deposit Insurance Corp., the biggest shareholder of Woori Financial, to draw up revised sale terms.

They called for the KDIC to report to the National Assembly measures to recoup taxpayers’ money by accelerating the sale of the group by the first quarter of 2012.

Meanwhile, a KDIC official recently expressed his skepticism over realizing the revitalization of the sale plan at the present stage.

“Woori share prices remain at a low level, which could be a main unfavorable factor for policymakers to decide on the sale in the near future (as they want to maximize sale prices),” he said.

Its share price ranges between 10,000 won and 11,000 won on the Korea Exchange, while it hovered around 15,000 won a year earlier.

Another state project to privatize KDB Financial Group has also been pushed by its chairman Kang Man-soo and a group of government officials.

KDB Financial has reportedly called for the Ministry of Strategy and Finance to exclude the financial group from the yearly list of public agencies.

It argues that release from the list will accelerate the privatization process including listing the group on the stock market, an online news provider reported.

Every year, the Finance Ministry announces the list of public agencies. The list for 2012 will likely be unveiled in the coming weeks.

Kang has said the group is seeking to sell 10 percent of the shares held by the government by the end of 2012.

He said the stake sale would be carried out through the group’s planned listing on the stock market.

The government has already mapped out step-by-step procedures to sell the KDB Financial shares held by the Korea Finance Corp. and the Finance Ministry, by 2014.

By Kim Yon-se (kys@heraldcorp.com)