First Vice Minister Kim Byoung-hwan convened an Investor Relations session with global investors in London on February 5 and shared insights into the current state of the Korean Economy. Vice-Minister Kim also discussed the government’s policy directions and measures, in particular the ‘Improvement Measures for Foreign Exchange Market Structure’.
Ahead of the upcoming IR meeting, the Ministry of Economy and Finance discussed with leading global equity and bond investment institutions about improving access to the Korean Foreign Exchange (FX) market. The majority of the foreign investors, including those attending the IR, spoke highly of the government’s recent actions, which opened the FX market to foreign banks and significantly expanded trading hours until 2 a.m., aligning with the closing time of the London FX market. They expressed their anticipation that such changes will not only benefit participants in the interbank FX market but also enhance the convenience of foreign stock and bond investors.
During the meeting, Vice-Minister Kim vowed to pursue improvements to the relevant FX systems in the first quarter as foreign investors requested that the settlement failure risks be managed in accordance with global standards so that currencies can be traded with a broader range of FX banks and across different time zones.
Furthermore, Vice-Minister Kim took the opportunity to address any misunderstandings among some foreign investors that the hedging capacity for investments in Korean Won-dominated assets made by foreign financial institutions is limited to the scope of actual demand (the value of invested Korean Won?dominated assets).