The head of South Korea’s financial regulator has called on global investors to invest more in the South Korean market, highlighting the strong fundamentals of the country’s financial market and ongoing efforts to further advance them, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said Sunday.
FSS Gov. Lee Bok-hyun made the call in a rare investor relations (IR) event in New York on Thursday (local time), jointly with the Korea Exchange, the country’s bourse operator.
In his remarks, the FSS chief insisted that South Korea’s financial industry “has sufficient loss-absorbing capacity to respond to potential risks,” according to the financial regulator.
“Korea is eager to improve economic fundamentals through a full-fledged restructuring on the back of the soundness” of its financial industry, he added.
Lee’s trip to New York follows the launch of the government-led “corporate value-up program” in late February, which aims to boost the value of local businesses and remove the so-called Korea discount, where loca
l shares are traded at prices lower than their fundamentals.
Lee said Seoul’s policy efforts would “contribute to making Korea a more attractive investment destination and also to creating synergy between foreign financial institutions entering Korea and Korean companies expanding overseas.”
Harvey Schwartz, CEO of Carlyle Group, expressed his gratitude for South Korea’s efforts to communicate with global investors through the event, attended by some 240 representatives from various global financial institutions, including Morgan Stanley and Blackstone.
Lee also held separate meetings with representatives from Carlyle Group, Morgan Stanley and Blackstone to “promote Korea’s efforts to develop the capital market and listen to their valuable opinions,” the FSS said in a press release.
“Also, Gov. Lee reassured that the FSS will continuously work hard to improve investment conditions in Korea to stimulate foreign buying and global firms’ expansion into Korea as well,” it added.
The FSS said it expects the I
R event to contribute to raising global awareness about South Korea’s financial industry, noting that it sought to show how stable the country’s financial markets are and what the country is doing to further advance its markets.
Following the event, the FSS chief told reporters the agency is working to create a computer system for short stock selling, though there are some technical and legal issues to be addressed.
“My personal hope or plan is to partially resume short stock selling in June,” he said.
The FSS imposed a temporary ban on short selling in November last year as part of efforts to crack down on illegal short selling by global investment banks. The measure is set to remain in place through the end of June.
Meanwhile, Lee held a meeting Friday (local time) with members of the Korea Finance Society on Wall Street and asked them to help promote South Korea’s ongoing efforts to develop its financial market and to act as a “bridge between the U.S. and Korea,” the FSS said.
Source: Yonhap News Age
ncy