South Korea’s financial regulator said yesterday it would start assessing the finances of savings banks to see whether they are healthy enough for government support or should be suspended.
The Financial Services Commission (FSC) said the investigation into 85 out of the 93 savings banks would start this month and run through next month.
Authorities have suspended eight savings banks this year for inadequate liquidity after soured real-estate project financing swelled the sector’s bad debt.
The debt is too small to threaten the overall banking and financial sector.
However, the suspensions have fueled anger among small depositors before parliamentary and presidential elections next year, especially after claims that wealthy depositors were tipped off in advance about the action.
The FSC said its probe would focus on capital adequacy ratios stipulated by the Bank for International Settlements standards.
Those savings banks with capital adequacy ratios above 5 percent would be eligible to receive state funds to bolster their assets if they wish.
Banks with a ratio below this would be suspended unless their fiscal health improves within a set period.
“In a bid to help ease market worries over savings banks, financial regulators will try to get the lowdown on the actual situation by examining their businesses and inducing their self-rescue efforts,” FSC chairman Kim Seok-dong told reporters.
“The plans are expected to create a healthy base for the savings bank sector’s growth and reduce market worries,” Yonhap news agency quoted him as saying.
The regulator said it would not suspend any troubled savings banks before its assessment is announced in late September, unless the bank faces a severe liquidity shortage due to customer runs.
Samhwa Mutual Savings Bank, the first savings bank this year to be suspended, was sold to Woori Finance Holdings in March.
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
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
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
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