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S.Korea postpones major bank privatisation
 
 
  
 
 AFP - Saturday, December 18
 
 
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 S.Korea postpones major bank privatisation
 
 
 
 
 
 
SEOUL (AFP) - – South Korea said on Friday it was postponing the privatisation of the country's largest banking group due to what it called unfavourable market conditions.
 
Public Fund Oversight Committee co-chairman Min Sang-Kee told reporters it was difficult for the government to sell its 57 percent stake in Woori Finance Holdings while also maximising the recovery of public funds.
 
The government took control of Woori when the Asian financial crisis in 1997 forced South Korea to bail out troubled banks with massive sums.
 
The committee, which was overseeing the sale of the stake worth around 5.8 billion dollars, met earlier Friday to decide whether to go ahead with the process.
 
The privatisation hit problems Monday when two consortia that had expressed interest dropped out, citing the high premium the government was seeking for the shares.
 
Last November the government said it had received 11 letters of intent for the stake from bidders it did not name.
 
But the two groups which dropped out Monday, one led by Woori Finance employees and another by the lender's corporate clients, were considered the frontrunners and the most likely to offer a strong enough bid.
 
Financial Services Commission vice chairman Kwon Hyouk-Se told reporters earlier Friday that none of the remaining nine parties had expressed interest in acquiring the full stake.
 
Kwon said the two foreign private equity funds that submitted letters of intent could probably not mount a bid on their own for the majority stake due to regulations limiting their ownership in banks.
 
And local private equity funds had not raised enough to buy a majority stake.
 
President Lee Myung-Bak has vowed to speed up privatisation of state-owned lenders and create "mega-banks" able to compete better globally.
 
But the privatisation programme was delayed by the global financial downturn, which also limited aggressive international expansion by South Korean banks.
 
-- Dow Jones Newswires contributed to this report --
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
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