The Financial Supervisory Service is fine-tuning details to launch an investigation into the Korean operation of U.S.-based asset management firm AllianceBernstein Ltd., which made public its stock trading four years after the required timing, regulatory officials said Monday.

While the financial regulator said it has yet to launch an official investigation, officials said the case has been under close watch. Its probe generally involves a paper-based review as a preliminary step.

“At the present stage, it is hard to tell whether the company put off the disclosure discreetly or not,” the FSS’s stake disclosure policy team head Kim Jeong-jae told The Korea Herald.

But he hinted that the FSS could choose to make intensive inquiries into the case in several weeks or months depending on the results of its preliminary review.

While market observers are issuing the possibility that the U.S. investor may be warned or handed over to the prosecution, another FSS official predicted that it would take four or five more months for the regulator to decide whether to penalize AllianceBerstein, even after the coming launch of the probe.

The global asset management firm had held a 7.89 percent share of auto part manufacturer Hyundai Mobis of Hyundai Motor Group until Nov. 4, 2008, but dropped its holding by 3.41 percent to 4.48 percent on Nov. 19, 2008.

The current financial regulation requires that shareholders with a five percent or more stake publically disclose when their stake increases or decreases by one percent or more within five days.

AllianceBernstein’s legal partner Kim & Chang posted the cause on public disclosure four years late, however, far passed the five-day grace period.

By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)