South Korea's Shadow Banking Stress Sends Warning to Global Investors

This is something that’s certainly spooking a lot of global investors, but what’s the root problem of the stressing career, exactly? Hey, good morning. Yes, indeed. So the root problem goes back to that flush of cheap cash that was around the globe after the global financial crisis. So in in Korea, as in many other parts of the world, a low interest rates near 0 or less, that cash had to go somewhere and it went in, in Korea in many respects in these more riskier projects in and outside of Seoul and it’s come a little bit undone. As rates in Korea, like much of the world, have gone up. So as serious of these issues and what a market participants expecting here. So to date, the government has done a pretty good job of keeping stuff intact, but the worry is that in the second-half, now that elections are out of the way, that it’ll have to take a stricter sort of stance on all of these issues. So the baseline is that people are hoping, expecting a soft landing, but the serious of the situation can be underestimated because this could force the Bank of Korea to cut its rates more than it would wish, and it could also impinge on. Growth in the second-half. So we we have to keep an eye out. We’ve seen policymakers managing to sort of stem the the contagion risk so far, but would be this be the case this time around? And if not, what are the sort of milestones to lookout for in particular? So we have one coming up actually this month, a company called Taun. Surprise market at the end of last year when it said it had to restructure its debt. So there’s a vote at the end of this month for banks, including a KDBA state lender to sign off to actually give their approval to this restructuring. And our reporting has shown that 50% of the debt on Tae Yung’s books there may be converted into equity in a in a huge equity for debt swap.