A Long Financial Arm

Woori Bank's U.S. subsidiary opens new bank branch in Los Angeles

The Woori Bank announced its U.S. subsidiary Woori America Bank has opened its Wilshire branch in Los Angeles on January 26 to expand its business boundary on the West coast of the United States. Woori America set up its Broadway branch in New York in 1984, and took over Pan-Asia Bank in 2003 and its assets totaled $800 million with $60 million in capital, operating 14 branches in the East coast of the United States. It is the largest Korean bank in the eastern United States.
The bank launched its office for lending business in Los Angeles in April last year to enter into the financial market in the second largest city in America and the brand new branch is located close to the Korean community in Los Angeles to provide financial services to Korean residents in the region including lending, remittances, and trade related financial services.
In the meantime, the bank plans to open 2 or 3 more branches in LA in the second half of this year, in addition to branches in Edison, New Jersey, Centerville, Virginia, and Atlanta, Georgia, for a total of 18 branches in 8 states in America.
The bank already has four branches in New York including Broadway branch, Flushing branch, Woodside branch, and Bayside branch. It has five branches in New Jersey: Portridge branch, Main Street branch, Ridgefield branch, Palisades's branch and Closter branch. It also has branches in the Philadelphia area including Cheltenham branch, and Elkins Park branch. It has Anandale branch in the Virginia area, Wilton branch in the Maryland area, and Wilshire branch in Los Angeles.
In the meantime, Woori Bank President Hwang Young-ki visited the Honam area from February 3 and 4 to find out about the current issues facing small and medium firms in the region. The CEO held a luncheon meeting with heads of those firms to listen to their management problems. He also toured plants of a number of those firms. About 40 of CEOs of those firms met with the Woori president at the lunch to talk about their management problems and listen to an expert's advice on strategies to cope with rapid changes in interest rates and foreign exchange rates. Woori Bank President pledged the bank's support to those firms in the region to resolve their problems. He said the bank will strive to draw up a win-win strategy for the bank and these firms through global financial services put together after professional financial consulting. The bank explained the benefits of "High-Tech Loan"provided to SMEs with technology competitiveness.
The Woori President also plans to visit other regions in the country this year including Busan, the second largest city in the country. In the meantime, Woori Financial Group recorded a net profit of 1.67 trillion won last year, the largest since the bank's founding, making more than one trillion won in net profit for two years in a row, following 2004.
The group in announcing the performance results said it was attained due to business activities focused on expanding sound assets and build a sound corporate culture based on improved soundness, creating the group's synergistic system. The financial asset expanded 20.5 percent at 164.5 trillion won, the highest rate among nationwide commercial banks in the country, with household lending growing 22.3 percent, the group said. The bad loan ratio was cut to 1.4 percent from 2.4 percent in 2004 with the loan provision rising to 115.3 percent last year, from 88.8 percent in 2004. The group noted that its synergistic effect has been taking hold with non-interest income rising 80 percent and improvement in sales of stocks, bancassurance, owing to synergy between banks and securities sector. The sale of beneficiary stocks tripled last year to 9 trillion won from 3 trillion won the previous year.
Officials of the group said they will try to make WFG a leading financial conglomerate in the country by redoubling their effort to create synergistic effect among all of its affiliates to expand the good-quality asset and customers as they did last year.
The operating profit rose 16.6 percent at 1.64 trillion won with net profit totaling 1.42 trillion won, although net profit before taxes expanded 5.4 percent. nw

Woori Bank President Hwang Young-ki.