Economists say debt may cool business sentiment in second halfEconomists expect inflation to cool with the arrival of harvest season but cautiously forecast that business sentiment will lose steam in the second half of the year on debt both at home and abroad.The central bank froze its policy rate at 3.25 percent Thursday even after having an inflation rate above its 3 percent target range for hal

July 14, 2011

Korean banks’ short-term foreign borrowing rose in June as lenders rushed to secure foreign currency funds amid worries the eurozone debt crisis may worsen, the financial watchdog said Thursday.A total of 16 local banks refinanced 107.4 percent of their maturing short-term foreign debt through fresh borrowing in June, up from 94.9 percent in the previous month, according to the Financial Superviso

July 14, 2011

Troubled companies to be shut downKorea’s creditor banks have singled out some 30 large firms that should either go through a workout program or be forced out of the market. The names of the companies in question, however, remain undisclosed.According to banking sources on Wednesday, local creditor banks completed the evaluation of companies whose loans exceed 50 billion won ($47 million) in late

July 13, 2011

Korea’s money supply grew at the slowest clip in more than seven years in May as the government’s tax receipt rose and foreign stock funds flowed out of the country, the central bank said Wednesday.The country’s M2, a narrow measure of its money supply, reached 1,690.5 trillion won ($1,587 trillion) in May, up 3.7 percent from a year earlier, according to the Bank of Korea.The May number slowed fr

July 13, 2011

LG Display Co., the world’s second-largest maker of liquid crystal display panels, will likely break ground on a new plant in China before December, an industry source said Wednesday. The company pushed back an initial plan to start construction of its eighth generation LCD plant in Guangzhou during the first half of this year, as panel prices continued to trend downwards. Despite the downturn in

July 13, 2011

Cooperative is in process of drastic restructuring to spin off financial operation into separate unitThe capital owned by South Korea’s state-run National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, or Nonghyup, stood at 16.1 trillion won ($15.22 billion) as of May, sparking fresh debate about how much the government should fork out to help it split up its units smoothly.Nonghyup is now drawing up a dras

July 12, 2011

Korea’s imports of pork and beef surged in the first half of the year from a year earlier due to the spread of foot-and-mouth disease that led to the culling of millions of animals here, a state agency said Tuesday.South Korea imported 219,681 tons of pork in the January-June period, up 120 percent from 99,899 tons a year earlier, according to the Animal, Plant and Fisheries Quarantine and Inspect

July 12, 2011

Korea’s central bank is widely expected to freeze the key interest rate for July following a rate hike in June due to growing household debt and lingering external economic uncertainty, a poll showed Tuesday.Eighteen out of 19 economists predicted that the Bank of Korea will freeze the benchmark seven-day repo rate at 3.25 percent on Thursday, according to the survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financi

July 12, 2011

The level of foreign debt is poised top $400 billion, complicating Seoul’s capital control efforts increasingly watched by major credit rating agencies abroad. Foreign debt in the first quarter May made the steepest hikes in three years, reaching $381.9 billion at the end of March. Noting an increase of $21.9 billion in just three months from December, the Finance Ministry predicted the figure to

July 11, 2011

Regulator pushes banks to improve capital adequacy ratiosKorea’s financial regulator said Monday it will further toughen the standards used to assess savings banks’ fiscal soundness in a bid to accelerate the cleanup of the troubled sector. “The planned assessment of 85 savings banks has started, and banks with BIS capital ratio of less than 8 percent as of late June are now required to submit sel

July 11, 2011

South Korea’s finance minister said Monday that the government could carry out smoothing operations if the local currency fluctuates sharply against the U.S. dollar.“If there are steep fluctuations in currency rates, our basic stance is that we could implement smoothing operations to ease the herd behavior in the market,” Finance Minister Bahk Jae-wan told reporters after a meeting with financial

July 11, 2011

SC First Bank, the South Korean unit of Standard Chartered Plc., said Monday it had temporarily shut down operations at 43 branches in a bid to minimize the impact of a prolonged labor strike. Unionized workers at SC First Bank launched an indefinite strike on June 27 in protest of the management's move to introduce a performance-based pay system, causing bank customers to face inconvenience in us

July 11, 2011

Shipbuilding giant STX Group on Sunday said it has sold 250 billion won ($236 million) of overseas assets to secure the funds to purchase a 15 percent stake in Hynix Semiconductor against its bidding rival, SK Group. STX Europe Holding, a wholly owned subsidiary of the STX Group, sold an almost 20 percent stake of its Singapore-based STX OSV Holdings to an investment fund to help pay for the $2.3

July 10, 2011

  South Korean stocks are expected to continue their upward march next week on the back of favorable market conditions, analysts said Saturday.    The country's key stock index, the KOSPI, gained 2.57 percent, or 54.61 points, this week to close at 2,180.35 on Friday, despite the lingering debt crisis in Europe and a rate hike by China.   Next week is packed with major events such as the central b

July 9, 2011

Hana Financial Group and Lone Star Funds reached an agreement to extend a deal to buy Korea Exchange Bank within six months, Hana said Friday.Hana, the nation’s No. 4 banking group, held a meeting of its board members later in the day to review the terms of the deal.In November, Hana struck a deal with the U.S. buyout fund to acquire its controlling 51 percent stake in KEB for 4.69 trillion won ($

July 8, 2011