May 13, 1999
| | |
| ||
| May 13, 1999 | atimes.com | |
| ||
| The Koreas Hyundai Motor to sell $1.6bn of stock, cash in on rally Bloomberg News SEOUL- Hyundai Motor Co., the flagship of South Korea's biggest industrial group, said it plans to raise up to 2 trillion won ($1.6 billion) this year by selling more stock to its shareholders. Hyundai Motor, whose shares more than doubled since October, is under pressure to raise funds after being called on to contribute 60 percent of the 1.2 trillion won its parent agreed to pay for bankrupt Kia Motors Corp. It plans to offer foreign shareholders, including Mitsubishi Corp. of Japan, 500 billion won of stock in the form of global depositary receipts, said Chae Yang Ki, a finance director at South Korea's biggest automaker. The rest will be offered to domestic shareholders, with half set to be offered starting May 17 and a similar-sized offering during the second half of the year. ''We think it's good to benefit from a boom in the stock market,'' Chae said. The shares are up 75 percent since October. Like other Korean companies, Hyundai Motor is trying to meet a government target to slash its debt to less than twice its equity by the end of this year. Its debt stood at almost five times equity at the end of last year, according to the Financial Supervisory Commission. ''Our paid-in capital is small in relation to the size of our sales and assets,'' Chae said. ''As an alternative, we decided to increase the capital to improve finances." Hyundai Motor had 3.19 trillion won in total capital, including 377.7 billion won of paid-in capital, at the end of December. It lost 33.18 billion won last year on sales of 8.7 trillion won. | |||||||||
 |
|
Front | China | Southeast Asia | Japan | Koreas | India/Pakistan | Central Asia/Russia | Oceania Business Briefs | Global Economy | Asian Crisis | Media/IT | Editorials | Letters | Search/Archive |
back to the top ©1999 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd. |
