S. Korea's corporate bond sale falls 9.8 pct in October-Xinhua

S. Korea's corporate bond sale falls 9.8 pct in October

Source: Xinhua

Editor: huaxia

2023-11-21 12:49:00

SEOUL, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's corporate bond sale fell last month due to a double-digit slide in issuance by both industrial and financial companies, financial watchdog data showed Tuesday.

The issuance of corporate bonds amounted to 19 trillion won (14.7 billion U.S. dollars) in October, down 9.8 percent from the previous month, according to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS).

It was attributed to weaker funding demand from both industrial and financial companies.

Bonds sold by industrial companies declined 22.9 percent over the month to 2.47 trillion won (1.9 billion dollars) in October.

Financial companies-issued bonds decreased 20.1 percent to 12.9 trillion won (10 billion dollars), but the issuance of asset-backed securities (ABS) more than doubled to 3.63 trillion won (2.8 billion dollars).

The central bank had left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 3.50 percent since January after hiking it by 3.0 percentage points for the past one and a half years.

Equity financing, including initial public offering (IPO) and rights issuance, stood at 412.9 billion won (319.8 million dollars) in October, down 84.7 percent from a month earlier.