Koramco REITs & Trust said Friday its real estate investment trust has closed its acquisition of a cold chain logistics warehouse tenanted by Nasdaq-listed e-commerce giant Coupang for roughly 360 billion won ($318.5 million) in the western port city of Incheon. The deal marks the biggest single logistics asset to be purchased by a REIT in the country by transaction size so far, the real estate investing subsidiary of clothing firm LF said. The warehouse, TJ Logistics Center, is a seven-s

Market May 14, 2021

Real estate investors searching for deals in South Korea were seen shifting their attention away from the capital city of Seoul in the first quarter of 2021 as demand for logistics assets rose, data showed Thursday. Commercial property deals that closed in Seoul during the first quarter with tickets of over $10 million added up to $2.2 billion, down 25.8 percent on-year, while investment in other parts of Korea rose 3 percent to $2.6 billion, according to data from New York-based capital marke

Market May 13, 2021

South Korea‘s battery materials maker and petrochemical firm LG Chem said Tuesday it plans to commit 150 billion won ($134 million) capital to a new private equity fund that targets promising companies dedicated to electric vehicle parts and ecofriendly plastics. The committed capital will be part of IMM Credit Solution’s upcoming growth-focused Korea Battery & ESG Fund, which aims to earmark a total of 400 billion won. IMM Credit Solution is a subsidiary of Korea‘s thir

Market May 11, 2021

Hanwha Asset Management said Tuesday it has launched a new mobile app for retail investors wanting to buy a fund and go around third-party fund distribution channels. This is the latest move of South Korea‘s fourth-largest firm -- which has around 97 trillion won ($86.6 billion) in assets under its management -- to create its own online fund marketplace in a nation where tech-savvy consumers had few choices to buy funds other than through third-party sales channels of banks, securities br

Market May 11, 2021

South Korea’s securities brokerage houses are in a heated race to attract retail stock investors with an interest in the US stock market, providing more cost-competitive services and enhancing those services with technology. Their services sweeten the deal for day traders here, who are increasingly fond of US stocks such as Tesla, Apple, Amazon.com, Alphabet, Nvidia and Microsoft, as the brokerages even buy and sell stocks overnight. With the start of daylight saving time in the US, regu

Market May 10, 2021

Technology disruption is already playing out among the commercial banking sector in South Korea, triggering a massive transformation of their services to fend off fast-rising online-only banks launched by internet companies with no banking experience. The legacy players are tasked with increasing online presence in the market, in part by moving to establish their own respective online-only lending arms for retail customers. But such investments should be made not just to keep their market leade

Market May 6, 2021

South Korean private equity firm VIG Partners is eyeing private credit strategies with a new team it established Monday, the company said Tuesday. The company, overseeing 3.8 trillion won ($3.4 billion) worth of private funds mainly dedicated to midmarket buyout strategies, added that it had hired Han Young-hwan as head of credit at VIG Partners. The credit arm will focus on special situations in private credit space, looking to take advantage of price dislocation in the belief that the debt a

Market May 4, 2021

Less than two weeks after Kakao Bank submitted a listing application to the Korea Exchange, Kakao Pay, another finance arm of South Korean internet giant Kakao, followed suit earlier this week. Such a back-to-back announcement of their plans for initial public offerings and listing on Korea’s stock market highlights disruptive technologies that are going mainstream in the domestic financial industry and challenges that traditional banking groups here may face. Each company’s enterp

Market April 29, 2021

Hyundai LNG Shipping on Tuesday signed a 20-year contract to hire up to six liquefied natural gas carriers owned by Malaysia-based Petronas LNG starting in 2024, amid a global race to achieve economies of scale in the wet bulk shipping industry.　 The deal, which involves 174,000-cubic-meter LNG vessels, could be the largest in South Korea’s history in terms of cargo capacity, said IMM Private Equity, which controls the shipping agent dedicated to LNG carriers. The vessels will

Market April 27, 2021

While the demand for private debt investments in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to continue to soar, private credit investors -- which offer nonbank financing to companies or development projects there -- should take advantage of opportunities and be mindful of gaps in between countries, experts said. During the two-day PDI APAC Summit Virtual Experience 2021 that ended Thursday, international investors, asset managers and other investment professionals flocked to discuss opportunities tha

Market April 26, 2021

South Korean educational technology startup Databank said Sunday it has completed a $2.7 million series A funding round and plans to use the proceeds to expand its artificial intelligence-powered services and widen its client base. Joining the latest round were domestic early-stage venture capital houses Company K Partners, Intervest and KB Investment. The fundraising brought the startup’s post-series value to $11.5 million, up sevenfold from the previous round of funding, according to th

Market April 25, 2021

The world‘s largest asset management firm BlackRock has sold a 1.18 percent stake in South Korea’s home appliance rental service firm Coway for 50 billion won ($44.7 million), a filing showed Thursday. Following the transactions, the combined equity holding of BlackRock Fund Advisors and 13 affiliated entities in Coway has been reduced to 3.83 percent, and is no longer subject to filing obligations as a blockholder of the company, which specializes in door-to-door rental services o

Market April 22, 2021

South Korea’s impact investing scene is facing a call for a standardized tool to measure the social impact a startup generates via its business, as the demand to address social challenges is on the rise and more young entrepreneurs are looking to take on the challenges. Such a tool is key to leveraging social ventures’ impact and sustaining their solution for international problems in the long run, in order to assure investors that their investment goes to the right social ventures,

Market April 22, 2021

Seoul-based Shinhan Asset Management said Thursday it plans to implement an equity investing framework associated with the environmental, social and governance factors for its domestic large-cap equity funds. Starting in May, 16 publicly pooled domestic equity funds managed by the fifth-largest asset management firm in South Korea must have at least 70 percent exposure to stocks that received the integrated ESG ratings of “BB” or above. The same strategy has so far been exercised

Market April 22, 2021

No coal power plants will be profitable in South Korea before the end of their expected lifetimes -- 30 years on average -- indicating coal power plants face a dismal financial future, a study showed Wednesday. An increase in renewable energy penetration in Korea and the newly introduced greenhouse gas emission cap system here are expected to trigger a significant decrease of coal power plant capacity factors, according to a report dubbed “End in sight: How South Korea can force coal off

Market April 21, 2021