An IB Center for S.E Asia

Woori Investment & Securities launches IB center in Singapore to spur overseas business

Woori Investment and Securities Co. has marked 2007 as the initial year for the bank's stepped-up plan to expand its overseas operations.
On Sept. 3, the company set up an investment banking center in Singapore as its first step toward becoming a representative Asian investment bank. Woori Investment Asia Pte. Ltd. is the company's Southeast Asian IB center, which will conduct IB businesses in cooperation with its offices in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries in the region from next year.
The Singapore subsidiary is capitalized at $50 million with the aim of running a brokerage business focused on Singapore for Korean stocks, making investments in local companies, taking over non-performing loans and principle investment. The company also plans to sell Korean financial products to Southeast Asian investors to expand its revenue sources.
Woori Securities plans to engage in a number of IB services such as advising and underwriting through its Singapore office covering such countries as India and others in the region.
The company's second overseas project is the establishment of a research center in Beijing, China next year with a staff of about 20 local analysts. The center will conduct research on the Chinese economy and companies and provide reports to its customers.
The center will eventually expand its research focus to Korea, China, Japan and other Asian countries in order to become a global research center. The company has held nine international conferences since 2005 to keep institutional investors updated on Korean business and to give Korean listed companies the opportunity to inform major global investors of their current operational conditions.
Woori Investment Securities has raised the portion of its overseas revenue to 40 percent of total revenue, showing the extent of the success of these regular international conferences.
Woori Investment & Securities recorded a net profit of 131.3 billion won in Q2 backed by a bullish stock market and sales growth of Oct. Kyongnam Bank achieved a record net profit of 100.7 billion won in the same period, aided by the increase of beneficiary certificate sales and non-interest income. Kwangju Bank also posted a net profit of 69.3 billion won from stable asset growth and the improvement of its bad loan ratio.
In the meantime, Woori Financial Group recently announced that it achieved a record performance of 1.50 trillion won in net profit in the first half of 2007, an increase of 50 percent compared to the same period in 2006. Operating profit also increased 47.3 percent to 2.17 trillion won.
The Group's total assets reached 264.3 trillion won as of the end of June, an increase of 15.1 trillion won compared to the end of 2006, a result of focusing on attracting valuable assets and customers.
The sources of the Group's excellent operating performance are as follows:
- Stable growth in core income sources such as interest income and fee income
- Improvement of asset quality ratios, such as delinquency ratio and NPL coverage ratio
- Increase of deposits and trading commission of Woori Investment & Securities thanks to a bullish stock market
- High growth in credit card business
Details of the performance in the second quarter are as follows:
With regard to profitability, net profit decreased to 617.3 billion won during Q2 from 887.0 billion won in Q1. However, considering gains of 500 billion won from the disposal of LG Card shares in Q1, the Group achieved stable growth in core earning sources such as interest income and fee income in substance. This was mainly a result of stable growth in assets, interest income, banking services, brokerage and beneficiary certificate sales.
For asset quality, the non-performing loan (NPL) ratio decreased 0.2 percent over the same period in 2006 to 0.9 percent backed by thorough risk management despite an increase in loans of 6.9 percent in Q2. Moreover, other asset quality ratios such as the delinquency ratio and the NPL coverage ratio also improved. nw

Pres. Park Jong-soo of Woori Investment and Securities Co.

The website of Woori Investment and Securities Co.