South Korea

Sprawling conglomerates dominate South Korea’s economy, making it hard to retool a creaking economic model. With a presidential election looming and financial technology firms growing, the market is ripe for disruption.

The 32nd annual Asiamoney Brokers Poll is a Vox Populi poll that identifies the leading brokerages for equities research, sales and trading in Asia. Voters are institutional investors who represent fund management firms, wealth managers, hedge funds, pension funds, and insurance companies that trade in Asia.

For international bank chieftains, life in Seoul is never boring. South Korean regulators are notorious for sudden tweaks to policies on household loans, dividends, labour policies and other areas that require increasingly agile responses.

Even in a land of hyper-savvy digital offerings, kakaobank remains an overachieving standout.

South Korea’s KB Financial Group is a clear winner of the best corporate and investment bank award, if only for making navigating the last 20 months of pandemic turmoil look easy.

Busan Bank, headquartered in South Korea’s second-largest city of Busan, takes the Asiamoney awards this year for best bank for SMEs and best bank for corporate social responsibility.

Busan Bank, headquartered in South Korea’s second-largest city of Busan, takes the Asiamoney awards this year for best bank for SMEs and best bank for corporate social responsibility.

Ok-Dong Jin, chief executive of Shinhan Bank, gave what has come to be known internally as the “do or die” address to his top executives last January. The gist of it was that the bank needed to accelerate efforts to raise its digital game or else it would lose ground to competitors.