Jeon Byeong-eal, the CEO of POSCO’s trading subsidiary Daewoo International, quit Tuesday after a protracted feud with the steelmaker over an overseas natural gas project.He announced his resignation while attending at a meeting of board of directors of the trading company in Seoul.“Having thought about what would be the future-oriented measure for the group, the company and all those concerned, I concluded that resigning is the quickest way to end the situation,” Jeon said.The outgoing CEO had

Industry June 16, 2015

POSCO was named the world’s most competitive steelmaker for the eighth consecutive year, the steelmaker said Tuesday. World Steel Dynamics, a global steel industry researcher, put POSCO at the top of the world-class steelmaker ranking at the conference to discuss success strategies of the steel industry, which was held in New York on Tuesday. The WSD ranked 36 steelmakers from around the world by analyzing 23 categories, including production capacity, profitability, technology innovation and fin

Industry June 9, 2015

The Middle East respiratory syndrome outbreak is taking a toll on South Korean builders, for whom the Mideast is a major source of revenue.Worries over South Korean construction workers in the Middle East have heightened as South Korea reported the world’s second most MERS infection cases on Monday.Compounding the risk to the firms is an economic one: the potential that workers in the countries leave the workplace and home buyers will not visit model houses fearing infection.“If any one of the d

Industry June 8, 2015

U.S.-based steel producers have lodged a complaint against South Korean and other steelmakers with the U.S. International Trade Commission accusing them of irregular trade practices.This is the first time that a country’s steel industry has taken anti-dumping retaliatory proceedings against foreign competitors this year ― duties were levied on some global steelmakers by authorities in six markets including Korea and China over similar disputes last year.According to an overseas media outlet, the

Industry June 5, 2015

Hanwha Group’s new chemical affiliate Hanwha Total Petrochemicals is mired in safety controversies less than a month after being rebranded from Samsung.The Labor Ministry said Tuesday it lacked appropriate safety measures and “fell short of legal standards” at its factory in Daesan, South Chungcheong Province.The company is under surveillance after a construction worker died from a fall at the site on May 19. The ministry said it would decide whether to press charges within this month after the

Industry June 2, 2015

POSCO, the country’s leading steelmaker, was granted approval by the Chinese government to build a steel mill there with an annual capacity of 3 million tons, the company said Wednesday. Once the company gets the green light from the South Korean government, POSCO will build the facilities in the southwestern city of Chongqing, which will produce steel using the firm’s self-developed Finex technology. The development comes less than two years after the company and Chinese steelmaker Chongqing Ir

Industry May 27, 2015

POSCO Plantec on Tuesday decided to submit workout plans to its creditors, the company said on Tuesday.The main creditor, the Korea Development Bank, will decide whether to approve the plans early June.If the plans are rejected, and the parent company declines to inject more funds into the unit, POSCO Plantec will become POSCO’s second subsidiary in its 47-year history to be put under court supervision.The plant parts unit also confirmed that about 89.2 billion won ($81.2 million) of its loans i

Industry May 26, 2015

Hyundai Heavy Industries is streamlining its financial units as part of an ongoing group-wide restructuring to ride out financial difficulties. The shipbuilder said Friday that it would realign the businesses of Hyundai Finance Corp., Hyundai Venture Investment and Hyundai Futures as part of its large-scale restructuring efforts to streamline business operations and combat the group’s financial crisis.Hyundai Finance chairman Chung Mong-il, the eighth son of the late Hyundai Group founder Chung

Industry May 25, 2015

The country’s leading steelmaker, POSCO, announced Thursday that it had sold off its entire stake in the Australian copper mining firm Sandfire Resources. POSCO’s 15.2 percent stake in the firm was sold for 130 million Australian dollars ($102.7 million). POSCO acquired the Sandfire shares in 2008 for about A$290 million as part of its efforts to diversify its raw materials sources.Although Sandfire has been profitable, POSCO categorized its investment in the firm as a nonessential asset and sol

Industry May 21, 2015

The Paris summit on climate change coming up in December will be a test of the ability of world leaders to read science accurately, and to act in the long-term interests of their countries and their planet.But the spotlight is also on business.Traditionally understood to be a major source of the problem, the private sector is now becoming a necessary part of the solution.The first cracks in the ice of corporate inactivity came in 2009, as the United Nations mounted a climate change summit in Cop

Industry May 21, 2015