South Korea's initial public offering (IPO) market is expected to have another bumper year in 2022 as a slew of companies, including battery maker LG Energy Solution, are planning for stock market debuts, analysts said Sunday. The amount of money raised via IPOs on the main and tech-heavy stock markets reached a record high of 20.8 trillion won ($17.5 billion) last year, according to industry data. As more firms are preparing to go public with an aim of attracting more than 1 trillion won via

  Korean Air Lines Co., South Korea's national flag carrier, said Thursday it will secure 557.8 billion won ($470 million) through a property sale as part of its efforts to improve its financial status amid a prolonged COVID-19 pandemic. On Friday, Korean Air will sign a deal to sell its land and building at Songhyeon-dong in central Seoul to the public housing developer Korea Land & Housing Corp., the company said in a regulatory filing. LH will exchange the Songhyeon-dong site with

Kyobo Life Insurance, one of South Korea's leading life insurers, said Monday that it has requested a reinvestigation into and punishment of some accountants of Deloitte Anjin accused of conspiring to inflate the prices of a put option that one of its strategic investors exercised years earlier. In October 2018, Affinity Equity Partners exercised a put option on 6 million shares in Kyobo Life Insurance at a strike price of 409,000 won ($345) per share after the insurer failed to deliver on its

Samsung Life Insurance said Monday that it will launch a joint fund with Korea Post to invest 400 billion won ($336 million) in foreign blue chip companies over the next 10 years, expanding cooperation in alternative investments like private equity and real estate. The country’s top insurer and the state-owned postal insurance will make investments under the recommendations of an asset management firm. A Samsung Life Insurance official declined to reveal details about the asset manager.

A 2014 meeting between Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Gene Sykes of Goldman Sachs is drawing attention, sources said Friday, in connection with Lee’s alleged plans to inherit his father’s leadership role at Samsung. During a court hearing on Thursday, an email written by Sykes, then-head of mergers and acquisitions at Goldman Sachs, was disclosed by Samsung’s lawyers as evidence for the defense. They say it counters prosecutors’ claims that Lee discus

Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance Co., the non-life insurance arm of Samsung Group, reported a 42.2 percent rise in its third-quarter earnings amid a fall in accident-linked insurance payments amid tightened social distancing rules. Net income came to 278.15 billion won ($235.5 million) during the January-September period, compared with a net profit of 195.56 billion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing. The improved bottom line is attributable to a fall in loss ratio

South Korea's top life insurer Samsung Life Insurance Co. said Thursday its third-quarter net profit plunged more than 50 percent from a year ago, but its bottom line rose 30 percent in the first nine months of the year. Consolidated net profit stood at 159.1 billion won ($134.7 million) in the July-September period, down 54 percent from a year earlier, Samsung Life Insurance said in a regulatory filing. Revenue increased 12.9 percent on-year to 9.09 trillion won in the three-month period, whi

The megahit Netflix series “Squid Game” depicts a dystopian world where 456 people compete in a series of extreme survival games on a remote island. The sole winner takes all the prize money, while everyone else bites the dust. In the real world, all the “Squid Game” deaths would be eligible for insurance coverage, according to a local insurance company. The question is whether those death benefits would differ depending on how the player died, it added. According to a

The chiefs of South Korea’s two main financial regulators -- the policymaking Financial Services Commission and the market watchdog Financial Supervisory Service -- have met with the heads of major insurance companies and banking groups here to discuss policy initiatives to support the growth of market players through deregulation, the two said Wednesday. “The rapid digital transformation of finance and the growth of online platform businesses are rapidly changing the nation’s

South Korean gaming firm Krafton has inked a deal to acquire 100 percent ownership of US video game developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment for $750 million, in the first takeover deal it has announced since the company went public in August, a filing showed Sunday. According to the disclosure filed with the Financial Supervisory Service, Krafton, a Tencent Holdings-backed company behind the battle-royale style PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds franchise, signed a sales and purchase agreement

Samsung Heavy Industries Co. said Thursday it will allot part of new shares to six Samsung Group affiliates, including Samsung Electronics Co. Samsung Heavy Industries, suffering from continued losses, plans to raise 1.28 trillion won ($1.1 billion) by selling 250 million common shares at 5,130 won per share to repay its debt and develop eco-friendly shipbuilding technologies. Of them, 50 million shares, or 20 percent, have been sold to the company's workers for 256.5 billion won. Later in

Fundraising activities via a company’s initial public offering rose sixfold by volume in South Korea‘s capital market during the first three quarters of this year over investors’ growing appetite for debutants on the stock market here, data showed Wednesday. The combined IPO proceeds of Korean companies, including special purpose acquisition companies, through the newly-issued shares between January and September came to 11.9 trillion won ($10.2 billion), up 478.3 percent fro

The family of late Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee plans to sell stakes in group affiliates worth 2 trillion won ($1.6 billion) to pay inheritance taxes, regulatory filings showed Saturday. Hong Ra-hee, the widow of the late business tycoon who died in October last year, plans to sell 19.9 million shares in Samsung Electronics Co., which were estimated at 1.4 trillion won as of Friday‘s closing price, according to the regulatory filing. The shares account for around 0.33 percent o

South Korea’s energy policy faces mounting uncertainties as two ministries appear to hold different views over liquefied natural gas, or LNG. According to industry sources Friday, the Environment Ministry is mulling to exclude LNG from its green classification system set for launch later this year. The classification system aims to evaluate the environmental sustainability of industries and judge which one is green and promote public and private investments. Industries excluded from

It has been a record year for the South Korean initial public offering market as companies succeeding in local listings have fetched more than a combined 16 trillion won ($13.8 billion) in proceeds, according to data compiled by the sole bourse operator here Sunday. The accumulated IPO proceeds of 73 firms listed this year on the domestic main board and tech-heavy bourse as of Friday came to 16.01 trillion won, the Korea Exchange data showed. The figure not only beat those of the total annual