RaymondsIndex

Korea declared war on its corporate zombies. In February 2026, the Financial Services Commission and Korea Exchange jointly announced a "concentrated delisting management period" — running through June 2027 — with a dedicated task force of 20 regulators assigned to accelerate the removal of distressed firms. KRX's own simulation estimates that up to 220 KOSDAQ-listed companies could face delisting proceedings this year alone. Improvement windows have been cut from 18 months to 12. New triggers now include persistent penny-stock status and semi-annual checks for full capital impairment. It is the most aggressive market clean-up in KOSDAQ's modern history. Meanwhile, across the world, the UK's Resolution Foundation issued its own warning at the start of 2026: thousands of zombie businesses — kept artificially alive through years of low interest rates and pandemic-era support — are now buckling under what the Foundation called a "triple whammy" of high b...

 In March 2026, the Bank of Korea reported something that deserves more attention than it received. Korea's M2 money supply grew by ₩18.5 trillion in a single month — reaching a total of ₩4,132.1 trillion. The driving force? Nonfinancial corporations added ₩34.9 trillion to short-term deposits and money market instruments, classified in the data as funds "awaiting investment." That phrase — awaiting investment — is doing a lot of work. And for individual investors, it should raise an immediate question: when exactly does the waiting end? --- The CGI Signal: Raised Capital That Doesn't Move The Cash Governance Index (CGI) is one of four leading indicators in the RaymondsIndex framework. It measures the relationship between capital raised and capital deployed — specifically: how much of what a company raised is actually being used for business, versus being parked in financial instruments generating passive interest income. A high CGI score indicates that raised capital...

In May 2026, two stories unfolded on opposite sides of the globe — and they asked the same question. In South Korea, HLB Innovation, a KOSDAQ-listed biotech company, issued ₩40.5 billion in zero-coupon convertible bonds, with the stated purpose of funding its subsidiary's CAR-T therapy clinical development pipeline. In the United States, Meta disclosed a 7% increase in AI capital expenditure for 2026, contributing to $700+ billion in projected Big Tech AI infrastructure spending. Investors did not celebrate Meta's announcement. They demanded evidence of return on invested capital. Two different markets. Two different scales. One identical underlying question: when a company deploys capital, is that capital actually working? What CEI Measures The Capital Efficiency Index is one of four leading indicators in the RaymondsIndex framework. It measures the alignment between capital deployment and value generation, tracking ROIC, asset turnover ratios, and investment deviation. A decl...

This week, two stories from opposite sides of the world are pointing at the same structural problem: what happens when the people running companies make decisions that look like growth but function as preservation — of their own position, their own listing, their own seat at the table. The Korea Signal: When M&A Becomes a Survival Tool The Seoul Economic Daily reported this week that a wave of "defensive M&A" is sweeping Korea's KOSDAQ market. Listed small and mid-cap companies — facing dramatically tightened delisting thresholds set to take effect in July 2026 — are acquiring outside businesses not to create genuine value, but to hit the revenue and market cap numbers required to stay listed. The numbers are striking. One biotech firm acquired a pharmaceutical company and reported revenue growth of 135%. An education company acquired a tutoring brand and reported 248% revenue growth in one quarter. The acquisitions are real. The growth in the numbers is real. ...

Introduction Two news items this week, from opposite sides of the Pacific, tell the same story. In Korea, Enchem — a KOSDAQ-listed battery materials company — has accumulated over 275 billion KRW in outstanding convertible bonds. The auditor has flagged going-concern uncertainty. The largest shareholder's shares were subject to forced selling (반대매매). The company was designated as an unfaithful disclosure entity. And yet: none of this is visible in a single-quarter income statement. The signals were structural, relational, and financial governance-based — long before the results showed up on paper. In the United States, activist investor Impactive Capital filed a proxy challenge against WEX Inc., arguing that the company's combined CEO/Chair structure and capital-allocation practices have driven sustained underperformance in ROIC and total shareholder return. Again: the issue is not a single bad quarter. It's a governance structure that insulates the wrong incentives. ...

In baseball, a sacrifice bunt is a strategic play. The batter gives up an out — deliberately — so another runner can advance. The team scores. The batter's statistics suffer. It is not failure. It is design. In corporate finance, the same logic applies. Not every company in a multi-asset portfolio is meant to generate returns for all stakeholders. Some are positioned to absorb losses, serve as debt warehouses, or fund exits for the controlling investor — while minority shareholders and institutional creditors absorb the downside. This is the sacrifice play. And Korea's Homeplus case is one of the most instructive recent examples. The Homeplus Timeline In 2015, MBK Partners — Korea's largest private equity firm — acquired Homeplus for approximately 7.2 trillion won, the largest PE deal in Korean history. Over the following decade, store assets were sold off in a series of sale-and-leaseback transactions, reportedly generating around 4 trillion won in proceeds. By Mar...