SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea will allow mutual savings firms and online-based companies to sell investment funds from next February, and draw up measures to cut sales fees for long-term investors, a regulator said on Sunday.
The Financial Services Commission FSC.L said in a statement that it will also tighten investor protection rules for fund sellers […]

BusinessWeek - Some participants in South Korea’s nascent alternative-investment market have grown pessimistic over the ability of incoming legislation to support the development of an onshore hedge funds industry.
The Capital Markets Consolidation Act will become effective in February. It is a sweeping attempt to give Korea a securities law akin to those in the […]

Telegraph.co.uk - A move by US and European central banks, as well as by central banks in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia and South Korea, to slash borrowing costs has failed to reassure investors.
"It’s impossible to predict the bottom, and technical analysis is meaningless as panic and fear overwhelm the markets," said Jang Huh, […]

BusinessWeek - Some participants in South Korea’s nascent alternative-investment market have grown pessimistic over the ability of incoming legislation to support the development of an onshore hedge funds industry.
The Capital Markets Consolidation Act will become effective in February. It is a sweeping attempt to give Korea a securities law akin to those in the United […]

Reuters - U.S. private equity house Lone Star is seriously considering suing the South Korean government if it delays approval beyond September of the firm’s $6.3 billion sale of shares in a local bank, a newspaper reported on Friday.
English language daily The Korea Times said Lone Star was mulling a suit claiming losses from the […]

Reuters - HSBC Holdings on Thursday denied a South Korean media report saying it had agreed with U.S. private equity firm Lone Star to set a new deadline for a $6.3 billion deal for control of Korea Exchange Bank.
"We have not created a deadline," HSBC spokesman David Hall […]

Bloomberg - Days after a March negotiating session to buy San Francisco’s Citicorp Center building for $370 million, Park Hyeon Joo is in the air on a Korean Air flight bound for Seoul, sipping a glass of red wine. He’s not celebrating.
Park, founder and chairman of Seoul-based Mirae Asset Financial Group, the biggest mutual fund […]

West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.Net)- Asia-based funds are getting bigger according to Alpa Magazine. Several of the funds on the list are relative newcomers and five members of the Asia 25 ranking were not on the list last year.
The 25 largest funds in Asia collectively had $52.2 billion in assets as of March 31, up […]

Bloomberg- South Korean life insurers are shunning U.S. and European corporate bonds because of a rising risk of default and plowing money into domestic debt.
Samsung Life Insurance Co., Korea’s biggest insurer, is diverting $500 million into 10-year government bonds, said Koo Sung Hoon, head of investments at the company. Kyobo Life Insurance Co., the third-largest, […]