South Korea to privatise Korea Development Bank

The government admits KDB privatisation is more difficult task than the Woori’s.

South Korea's financial markets supervisor said on Wednesday the country would start the privatisation of Korea Development Bank (KDB) next year as planned, despite the country's deadlocked $6 billion-plus stake sale in Woori Finance Holdings.

The move to take the state-run KDB private comes after South Korea halted the country's biggest-ever financial sector privatisation of Woori Finance that was aimed at ending its costly bailout of the financial sector in the wake of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.

"We will set up a task force and search for ways," Chin Dong-soo, chairman of the Financial Services Commission, told a news conference.

"The KDB privatisation is a more difficult task than the Woori privatisation but we asked KDB for possible ways or alternatives."

KDB Financial Group, the holding firm of KDB, said in late October that it planned to float its shares via an initial public offering next year on the local stock market.

The government had planned to privatise KDB next year when the Woori deal gets cleared, Chin said.

View the full story in Reuters.