South Korea’s stock market announced yesterday it would fine Deutsche Bank’s local brokerage 1 billion won (US$888,160) for improper transactions, the biggest penalty it has ever imposed.
The move comes after the some of the brokerage’s functions were suspended for six months by financial authorities on Wednesday for market manipulation, while prosecutors said on Thursday they were also looking into the case.
Deutsche Bank expressed regret, but said the move would disrupt “only a small fraction of its business” in South Korea.
The Korea Exchange yesterday ordered the German bank to pay the fine and urged it to discipline three employees.
“Deutsche failed in its duty to notify the Korea Exchange on time about its program trades, hurting investor trust in our regulatory system and causing confusion [in the market],” said Lee Cheol-jae, an executive director of the exchange’s Market Oversight Division.
The exchange said the Deutsche Bank’s local unit had engaged in improper arbitrage trading between the futures and spot markets and sold an excessive amount of shares in SK Telecom and KT Corp.
It said the brokerage provided misleading information about the nature of its arbitrage transactions and violated rules on large program selling orders, which should be reported in advance.
The German bank’s Hong Kong unit and local securities unit came under investigation for alleged market manipulation and unfair transactions following a plunge in the South Korean market on Nov. 1 last year, an options expiry day.
The benchmark KOSPI index fell 48 points in the last 10 minutes of trading due to arbitrage trading between the spot and futures markets. During that time, about 2.4 trillion won in sell orders from foreign investors were processed, most of them through Deutsche Bank’s local unit.
Five members of the bank’s staff are suspected of gaining 44.8 billion won through illegal trading.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last