Invest KOREA

The Seoul City Government and the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) held the Financial Hub Seoul Conference on Wednesday to promote investment from foreign financial firms. The conference, held at the Grand Hyatt in Shanghai, was attended by 200 people from 70 global financial companies in China.

“We are making government-wide efforts to maintain close cooperation with the international financial network and prepare measures to help a soft landing of household debt,” said Choi Jong-ku, Chief Vice Governor of FSS, in his keynote speech.

After explaining the development progress of Seoul and Busan, which are cities designated the financial center of Korea, the FSS stressed that its goal is to develop Korea into a financial hub of Asia by using Korea’s advanced financial market and industries.

The FSS stated that Korea has huge development potential, as it ranked 6th in the Global Financial Centres Index last year and as the market capitalization of stocks owned by foreign investors accounted for 34.9 percent as of February.

Chinese bank Huang De introduced Korea as an attractive market that grew an average 4.5 percent over the last decade and has 13 Korean firms that have ranked within the top 500 global companies.

Huang De pointed to a tightly-knit distribution network, advanced technology, excellent human resources, and free trade agreements with 45 nations as Korea’s strong points.

The conference introduced Seoul’s Magok District formation project, the Korea Center for International Finance (KCIF), and a way for the National Pension Service to manage global funds well.

At the conference, Seoul signed memorandums of understanding with China’s Guotai Junan Securities and India’s ICICI Bank as well.