In today’s briefing:
- Block Deal Sale of 2.2% of Kakao Pay by Alipay
- Locals Driving Corporate Reforms and 10 Korean Companies Recently Announcing Share Cancellations
![](http://www.smartkarma.com/assets/plugins/a3-lazy-load/assets/images/lazy_placeholder.gif)
Block Deal Sale of 2.2% of Kakao Pay by Alipay
- After the market close on 5 March, it was reported that Alipay will sell a 2.2% stake (2.95 million shares) in Kakaopay (377300 KS) in a block deal sale.
- A key component of this block deal sale is that there will be a lock up period of 90 days post the sale date.
- We would avoid this block deal sale. There is a high probability of Kakao Pay’s share price falling below the block deal price of 38,380 won after 90 days.
Locals Driving Corporate Reforms and 10 Korean Companies Recently Announcing Share Cancellations
- In a recent discussion with a client, one of the questions that was raised was regarding the impact the local investors are having on the corporate governance reforms in Korea.
- The number of local investors in the Korean stock market has jumped in the past few years from 5.3 million in 2017 to 14.4 million in 2022.
- All in all, I think Korea is about 3-5 years behind Japan in various corporate governance reforms. So it has a lot of catching up to do.