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Mergers & Acquisitions Soon for sale: Altos Ventures-backed Cafe Knotted operator

Silicon Valley-based Altos Ventures-backed Good Food For Good (GFFG), operator of South Korea’s popular dessert cafe, Cafe Knotted, will likel...

Shipping & Shipbuilding HD KSOE secures $1.8 bn in container ship orders

HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co. (KSOE) secured orders for 22 container ships worth a total of 2.54 trillion won ($1.8 billion) ...

Markets Kakao shares sink on SK Telecom’s stake sell-off news

Kakao Corp. shares underperformed its peers and the broad market on Friday after SK Telecom Co. sold off its entire stake in the South Korean platfo...

Earnings KB Financial logs 61% profit growth, rebounding from ELS fiasco

KB Financial Group Inc. on Thursday reported a 61% jump in first-quarter profit, led by a nearly threefold rise in earnings at its flagship unit Koo...

Steel POSCO to invest in Hyundai Steel’s Louisiana plant

South Korea’s top steel maker POSCO has decided to invest in Hyundai Steel Co.'s first overseas plant in Louisiana and collaborate on research...

Sovereign wealth funds Korea’s WGBI inclusion moved to next April; Seoul works on policy steps

South Korea’s much-anticipated inclusion of its bonds in the FTSE World Government Bond Index (WGBI) has been postponed to April 2026 from Nov...

Korean stock market South Korean stocks, currency dive amid deeper US tariff turmoil

The South Korean stock market logged its biggest daily loss of more than 5% in eight months on Monday, joining its Asian peers bruised by panic sell...

Entertainment Kakao Entertainment sheds loss-making units, revives IPO prospects

Kakao Entertainment Corp. has been divesting unprofitable music labels and digital content platforms, which it has gobbled up over the past few year...

Real estate Asia Property to buy WeWork building in Seoul

Seoul-based real estate investment firm Asia Property has been picked as the sole preferred bidder for an office building currently occupied by cowo...

Real estate Shinhan REITs picked as sole bidder for BNK Digital Tower

Shinhan REITs Management is expected to acquire BNK Digital Tower, an office building in the affluent neighborhood of Gangnam in southern Seoul, aft...

Batteries SK On to supply 100 GWh of EV batteries to Nissan

SK On Co. has landed a deal to supply nearly 100 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electric vehicle batteries to Japanese carmaker Nissan Motor Co., which cou...

Games Krafton invests in 10 overseas game startups in 2024

Krafton Inc. invested in 10 overseas game developers in 2024 in search of the next big franchise intellectual property (IP) following its mega-hit t...

Debt financing MBK chairman to leverage own funds to pay Homeplus suppliers

Michael ByungJu Kim, the co-founder, partner and chairman of Northeast Asia-focused private equity firm (PEF) MBK Partners Ltd., is expected to leve...

Real estate Kumho Petrochemical's Seoul headquarters put on market

IGIS Asset Management Co., has put Kumho Petrochemical Group’s headquarters building, Signature Tower in central Seoul, up for sale – a ...

Korean games Nexon becomes 1st Korean game publisher with over 4 trillion won in sales

Nexon Co., the parent of Nexon Games Co., became the first Korean game developer to achieve the 4 trillion won ($2.8 billion) sales milestone in 202...

Sovereign bonds Foreigners return to Korean debt market; Korea on course to join WGBI

Foreigners scooped up South Korean government bonds in January despite the country’s ongoing political upheavals, betting big on the country&r...

Corporate restructuring Samsung Life, Samsung Fire sell $193 mn in Samsung Electronics shares

Samsung Life Insurance Co., South Korea’s largest life insurer, and Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance Co., the country’s No. 1 non-lif...

Cryptocurrencies Korean investors abandon savings, stocks for cryptocurrencies

Money is rapidly shifting to cryptocurrency markets in South Korea as lower interest rates and lackluster stock prices reduce the investment appeal ...

Mergers & Acquisitions S.Korea’s bagel sensation London Bagel Museum attracts multiple foreign investors

London Bagel Museum, which has ignited a bagel fad in South Korea, has drawn strong interest from multiple investors from abroad for its stake sale ...

Banking & Finance KB Financial to buy back $359 bn in shares after record net profit in 2024

KB Financial Group Inc., South Korea’s largest financial holding group, will spend nearly 1.8 trillion won ($1.2 billion) to boost shareholder...

Earnings SK Hynix surpasses Samsung with record-high profit in Q4

SK Hynix Inc., the top supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips to Nvidia Corp., on Thursday reported its highest-ever quarterly profit of 8.08...

E-commerce Coupang, Naver in dead heat for South Korea’s e-commerce market lead

Coupang Inc. and Naver Corp., South Korea's top two e-commerce players, are expected to further narrow the gap in their race for the market lead thi...

Deals IMM PE exits Woori Financial with double-digit return

IMM Private Equity has divested its remaining 1.38% stake in Woori Financial Group for 166.4 billion won ($115 million), exiting the South Korean fi...

Private equity Korean lenders to Accell warn they may boycott KKR

KKR & Co. is facing a huge backlash from South Korean financial services firms after the debt restructuring of Dutch bicycle manufacturer Accell...

Mergers & Acquisitions Corstone, Q Capital in talks with foreign investors to sell K-chicken chain

Seoul-based private equity firms Corstone Asia and Q Capital Partners are in talks with foreign investors to sell a South Korean fried chicken chain...

Earnings Samsung’s Q4 profit misses expectations; Stock rises

Samsung Electronics Co. flagged weaker-than-expected earnings for the last quarter of last year due to a fall in memory chip prices and soft demand ...

Korean startups Hyundai Motor to introduce 10 startups in robotics, AI at CES 2025 

Hyundai Motor Group, which has been promoting open innovation through generous investment in startups with promising technologies, will lead 10 cher...

Foreign exchange Global investment banks see Korean won staying weak in 2025

The South Korean won is forecast to hover in the mid-1,400s level against the dollar through the third quarter of 2025, according to global investme...

Business & Politics South Korea’s Acting President Han impeached; Stocks, won plummet

Han Duck-soo, South Korea’s acting president and prime minister, was impeached in Parliament on Friday amid a deepening political crisis batte...

Leadership & Management POSCO carries out drastic top management reshuffle

POSCO Group on Monday replaced chief executives of key seven units in a drastic overhaul of the South Korean steel-to-battery materials group to shi...