RaymondsIndex

On 20 August 2026 Korea's Fair Trade Commission conditionally approved the Daesan No.1 combination, the first structural realignment submitted by the country's petrochemical industry. HD Hyundai Chemical will absorb Lotte Daesan Petrochemical, and Lotte Chemical and HD Hyundai Oilbank will each hold 50% of the merged entity and control it jointly. The number of domestic suppliers in low-density polyethylene and ethylene-vinyl acetate falls from four to three. After the deal, the top three will hold 82% of LDPE and 95% of EVA by sales volume. The remedies are entirely behavioural. For five years, domestic price movements in LDPE and EVA are benchmarked to export price movements. The companies must keep supplying every grade in production at the time of the combination when domestic buyers ask for it. Sharing of competitively sensitive information — prices, volumes, costs, inventory — is banned, as are dual appointments; staff returning to Lotte Chemical are excluded from LDPE ...

On 29 July 2026, a KOSDAQ-listed display equipment maker called Yas Co. (255440) told the market it had just finished the best quarter in its twenty-four-year history. Preliminary consolidated Q2 revenue came in at ₩87.2bn and operating profit at ₩26.2bn — increases of 1,373% and 1,107% against the same quarter a year earlier. On that same day, 590,135 of its shares were being dumped onto the open market by a creditor exercising security rights over stock the founder had pledged for a loan. The day before, 524,079 shares had gone the same way. For context, the average daily volume over the first twenty-seven days of July had been 18,909 shares. Over five sessions from 28 July to 3 August, 2,863,024 shares were sold this way, and the founder's holding fell from 42.58% to 18.07%. The company's position was that control had not changed hands, since no new major holder had filed. Both of these things were disclosed. Neither was hidden. And almost nobody read them together. The ...

In February 2026, Jollibee Foods Corporation (PSE: JFC) told its investors it was buying Korea's largest hot pot chain. The announcement was precise in a way acquisition announcements often are not. All Day Fresh, operator of Shabu All Day, would be acquired by Jolli-K — 70% JFC, 30% Korean private equity firm Elevation Equity Partners Korea — for approximately USD 87 million (roughly KRW 127 billion), at about 4x EV/EBITDA. The release named the unit economics that made the price work: a two-to-three-year payback period, approximately 40% ROIC, high double-digit EBITDA and EBIT margins, and a "capital-efficient, highly franchised business model." It named the store base: 169. It told shareholders that on completion, global store count would rise by roughly 1% — those 169 stores. Korea's Fair Trade Commission cleared the transaction in April. On 19 August 2026, the Korean business daily Etoday reported that the chain had closed 23 outlets. Store count, which the pap...

On August 18, 2026, a small Korean security-software company approved a modest financing that will not make international news. SSR, listed on KOSDAQ, resolved to issue 1,902,173 new shares at ₩3,680 each — about ₩7.0 billion — entirely to its controlling shareholder, Jiran Jigyo Security, and an affiliate, Jiran Jigyo S&C. Payment is due October 6. The shares are locked up with the Korea Securities Depository for one year. Several details deserve credit before anything else. The issue price carried a 0% discount to the ₩3,683 reference price — third-party allotments in Korea commonly price at a discount, and the controlling shareholder here chose not to take one. In March 2026, both companies cancelled their entire treasury holdings (400,000 shares and 382,090 shares respectively) and committed future repurchases to cancellation. As capital discipline, these are real signals, and they should be read as such. What interests me is a different line in the same filing. Two answe...

On August 4, 2026, Mitsui & Co. resolved to repurchase up to 60 million of its own shares, for up to ¥200 billion, between August 5, 2026 and January 29, 2027. That much is an ordinary buyback. What made the resolution unusual came next in the same document: the board also resolved to cancel every share it buys, and named the date — February 5, 2027. Seven days after the buying stops, the shares stop existing. The stated reason was "to enhance shareholder returns and to improve capital efficiency." Eight days later, a Korean listed company disclosed that it was terminating a ₩10bn treasury share acquisition trust ahead of schedule, because the buying was complete. The 656,972 shares acquired under it would be delivered into the corporate securities account. Treasury holdings before termination stood at 1,342,123 shares — 8.19% of the 16,393,260 shares outstanding. Nowhere is there a cancellation date. Five days earlier, another Korean issuer resolved to buy ₩6bn and sai...

On August 12, the Korea Exchange designated 36 listed companies as management issues. It was the first cohort to complete the 30-trading-day test under a listing rule that took effect on July 1: a closing price below ₩1,000, or a market capitalisation below ₩20bn on KOSDAQ and ₩30bn on KOSPI. Two more names were added on the 13th, one on the 14th. The running count is 39, and eight more were flagged as designation-risk during the week of August 10–15. Industry estimates reported by Yonhap put the eventual figure near 100 delistings within the year — an estimate, not a count. The dominant reading is that a long-delayed cleanup has finally begun. It probably has. But there is a second number in the same reporting, and it points somewhere else entirely. The response, not the rule Between February 12 — when the Financial Services Commission and the Korea Exchange announced the delisting reform — and August 12, when the first designations landed, 276 reverse stock splits were initiated ...