Fitch Ratings executives are due to meet top officials from various ministries, central bank and the US Embassy this week, the Finance Ministry said Monday. The annual credit valuation consultation will be led by James McCormack, Fitch’s global head of sovereign and supranational ratings. The delegation will be in South Korea from Tuesday to Thursday for meetings with officials from the Ministry...

Korean oil refiner S-Oil on Monday held the 2019 Hero Citizens Award ceremony at its headquarters in Seoul. The oil refinery recognized 23 people who put themselves at risk to save others in peril, and awarded them a total of 140 million won ($119,000), the company said. “The courage of unsung heroes can be a source of inspiration to many people,” said CEO Hussain Al-Qahtani. “S-Oil will contin...

Sluggish economic growth and a bleak stock market outlook have pushed South Korean securities firms to expand their horizons by turning to real estate investment. While some brokerages prefer to operate teams dedicated to real estate investment trusts, or REITs, others choose to establish subsidiaries, suggesting full-scale portfolio expansion. Yet the trend has some observers worried that the ...

South Korean investors have lost their faith in financial firms and their products, amid the latest series of investment fiascos here, a survey showed Friday. According to a poll conducted by the Korea Financial Investors Protection Foundation on 1,000 respondents aged from 25 to 69, 10 out of the 12 questions scored below 50 out of 100 points. Scoring the lowest were the financial firms’ duty ...

Hyundai Capital, the financing arm of South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group, is expanding its presence in Brazil with new retail financial products, officials said Thursday. The financial firm’s joint venture with Santander Brasil -- Banco Hyundai Capital Brasil -- which was launched in April this year, is set to unveil a new retail product that guarantees the residual value of a car, called “person...

SC Bank Korea, the local subsidiary of British banking giant Standard Chartered, said Monday that it will launch a limited edition of its check cards and bankbooks featuring characters from the upcoming Disney animation “Frozen 2.” To commemorate opening of the highly anticipated sequel to the Disney hit “Frozen,” slated to hit local theaters on Thursday, the Korean subsidiary is offering 30,000...

A local equity fund in which President Moon Jae-in invested has amassed more than 100 billion won ($85 million), fund operator NH-Amundi Asset Management said Sunday. Since its launch in August this year, the NH-Amundi Victorious Korea Equity Fund has logged 6.98 percent in return rate as of Friday. The fund was designed to invest in local firms that manufacture industrial equipment, components...

The amount of investments by South Korea’s top 30 conglomerates as of the third quarter fell over 16 percent on-year amid slow growth and sluggish trend of the semiconductor business, a market tracker said Sunday. The combined investments totaled 54.33 trillion won ($46.3 billion) as of the end of September, down 16.6 percent from 65.17 trillion won a year earlier, CEO Score said in a statement....

Samsung BioLogics said Thursday it has become the first CMO company globally to obtain ISO 27001 certification from the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization. ISO 27001 is the most prestigious international standards certification in information security. It acknowledges the local biopharma firm to be the “World’s Best CDMO Company,” and will help boost trust between global...

Hyundai Card, the credit card unit of Hyundai Motor Group, is preparing to level up its business with “super customized” marketing, officials said Wednesday. The new system, heavily based on the data of over 8 million customers accumulated by the company over the years, uses artificial intelligence to measure a customer’s real-time circumstances, such as location and weather, and uses that infor...

With Black Friday falling in the US on Nov. 29, South Korea’s credit card operators are rolling up their sleeves to lure online shoppers with discounts and giveaways, industry data showed Wednesday. Overseas online retail customers -- dubbed “jikgu-jok” in Korean -- are expected to flock to various shopping sites in the upcoming season, running from Black Friday in end-November, to Cyber Monday ...

Primera, a skin care cosmetics brand under South Korean beauty giant Amorepacific, has launched a limited edition of its Mango Butter Comforting product line as part of its “Let’s Love” campaign. The campaign was first launched in 2013 as part of its corporate social responsibility efforts and benefits girls in Jamui, India, who are affected by poverty and inequality. The product cases feature ...

Among South Korea’s chaebol owner family members, 51 are aged 30 or younger and also own stocks worth 10 billion won ($8.6 million), industry data showed Monday. According to conglomerate tracker Chaebul.com, the total value of such stocks amounted to over 1.8 trillion won, with the per capita average of 36.8 billion won, as of the closing price Wednesday. According to DART -- the Financial Sup...

Struggling to innovate in a fast-changing, competitive market, South Korean banks have their eye on a new integrated financial service -- open banking. The service lowers the threshold for bank customers by allowing them to use virtually all banking services of different banks via a single mobile application. While this new financial technology service increases user convenience, it has also ra...

Woori Bank Vietnam, the local subsidiary of South Korea’s Woori Financial Group, held its office opening ceremony in Danang this week, officials said Friday. The bank’s Danang office had earlier obtained its business license in September and kicked off business on Oct. 25, becoming Woori’s tenth bank office in Vietnam and the first in the central region. It was also the first foreign bank to ki...