South Korea's 79 conglomerates lost more than 251 trillion won ($173 billion) in combined market capitalization last year, with Samsung Group shedding the most value, a corporate data tracker said Wednesday.
CEO Score looked into changes in the market capitalization of the 79 companies out of 88 that were designated as conglomerates as of end-2024.
The surveyed business groups' overall market value fell 13.2 percent to 1,651.68 trillion won as of end-2024 from 1,902.3 trillion won a year earlier, according to CEO Score.
Samsung Group's market capitalization plunged 23.5 percent to 543.33 trillion won from 710.08 trillion won over the cited period, the data firm said.
Samsung's loss comes amid prolonged delays in securing Nvidia Corp.'s approval for Samsung Electronics Co.'s high bandwidth memory chips for artificial intelligence accelerators.
In contrast, the country's leading shipbuilder, HD Hyundai, formerly Hyundai Heavy Industries Holdings, saw its market value more than double to 77.67 trillion won in 2024 from 34.32 trillion won the previous year.
An increase in shipbuilding orders and electric transformers resulted in the Korean shipyard's overall gain in market value, the company said.
SK Group, which has SK hynix Inc. under its wing, also reported an 11.8 percent on-year gain in market capitalization to 202.73 trillion won as of end-December. (Yonhap)
