Amid the accelerating volatility of South Korea’s stock market, discontent is brewing over foreign investors, accused of being responsible with their rampant short selling. Short sellers, either institutional investors or foreign investors here, place bets on stocks that they think would fall in value. They sell borrowed shares in companies, and later repurchase them at lower prices to profit, w...

Highly volatile exchange rates and dampened investment sentiment around the world are now posing challenges to South Korea’s asset management firms, which have been accelerating their expansion into global real estate markets in recent years, according to market watchers. Seeking out new opportunities beyond the nation, Korean investment companies have inked a number of multibillion-dollar deals...

Fintech platform operator Viva Republica said Wednesday that it has received preliminary approval to run a stock trading business from the nation’s financial watchdog, the Financial Services Commission. In order to run the stock business in a safe and stable manner, the company, which runs peer-to-peer money transfer app Toss, will beef up workforce and upgrade systems in the coming months befor...

Major shareholders of logistics giant Hanjin KAL on Wednesday rebelled against proxy advisory firms Korea Corporate Governance Service and Institutional Shareholder Service for their decision to support the extension of Chairman Cho Won-tae’s term. The group consists of his elder sister and former Korean Air Vice President Cho Hyun-ah, KCGI -- local activist fund, Hanjin’s biggest shareholder wi...

South Korea’s leading online-only bank Kakao Bank announced Tuesday that Yoon Ho-young, who headed the bank as co-CEO, will now serve as the company’s sole chief. The online bank has been managed by Yoon and former co-CEO Lee Yong-woo -- who were respectively from mobile messenger firm Kakao and investment company Korea Investment & Securities. The two companies are major shareholders of the ban...

South Korea’s Mirae Asset Financial Group has invested some $150 million in Impossible Foods, a US-based startup that produces meat alternatives, according to reports Monday. Mirae Asset, along with several financial investors, participated in the latest funding round,” an investment banking source was quoted as saying by Financial News. “Mirae Asset was the only Korean firm and appears to be pa...

The fast-spreading novel coronavirus outbreak has erased $16.7 trillion market capitalization in global stock markets, according to news reports Sunday. The overall market cap in 86 nations dropped 18.7 percent, from $89. 2 trillion on Jan. 20 to $72.5 trillion on March 12, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The market cap loss during the volatile past few weeks is approximately tenfold t...

The commercial real estate segment will also likely feel the pinch if the pandemic causes a global economic downturn, according to property management firm CBRE. “A negative impact on demand for office space is inevitable if the coronavirus crisis lingers,” the company said in a recent report. The retail sector has borne the brunt of the coronavirus outbreak, as even retail giants like Louis Vu...

[EMPOWERING WOMEN FINANCIERS] The Korea Herald is publishing a series of articles to shed light on efforts to transform South Korea’s financial market by having more women financiers both at working and leadership levels and the challenges they face. This is the first installment. -- Ed. The industry-wide campaign to “break the glass ceiling” has been going on for years, with little progress so...

Korean chemical materials manufacturers Kolon Industries and SKC have sold their stakes in SKC Kolon PI, a polyimide film maker, for some 300 billion won ($250 million) in a bid to acquire seed funding to nurture new businesses, according to the two companies on Monday. Kosdaq-listed SKC Kolon PI is a joint venture established by Kolon Industries and SKC in 2008. It is the world’s largest polyim...

South Korean construction company Daelim Industrial has completed the takeover of Carliflex, a chemical business unit of Kraton, a US firm that produces specialty polymers and chemical products derived from pine wood pulping byproducts. Through the acquisition, worth $530 million, Daelim has gained Carliflex’s operations and workforce overseas, in the US, Germany, Belgium, Japan and Singapore. ...

South Korea’s state pension fund said Friday that it would exercise its voting rights at Hanjin KAL, the holding firm of logistics conglomerate Hanjin Group, an apparent move to intervene in an ongoing leadership feud among the founding family members. “The National Pension Service has decided to exercise its voting rights at Hanjin KAL and GIIR on its own after retrieving them from its proxy ag...

As the deadly coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) is sparking fears of a global pandemic, investors in South Korea are flocking to safe haven assets, gold in particular, according to data Friday. The accumulative transactions of gold in the first two months of this year at the Korea Gold Exchange, a private gold exchange here, stood at 27,243, up 192 percent from the same period last year. The excha...

The National Assembly on Thursday rejected a proposed bill to ease regulations for online-only banks, which will deal a heavy blow to K bank, one of South Korea’s two online banks that is struggling to raise additional funds due to regulatory hurdles. The bill was unexpectedly voted down 82:75 with 27 abstaining at the plenary session, although it received the green light from the legislation an...

An increasing number of multiple homeowners in South Korea are choosing to give real estate to their children instead of selling it, data showed Wednesday. The number of apartments transferred from parents to children stood at 1,632 in January -- an increase of 305 from December and the third-highest jump since the compilation of relevant data began in 2006, the Korea Appraisal Board said. Mean...