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Korea Report -
December, 2015.
Market is like a wave repeating ups and
downs. Sometime it forces everything to run into a blank wall, and then, it
shows its capable hand to create some niche to make the participants relaxed.
The boom through 2003-2008 kept ceaselessly inflating the balloon until the
Lehman Brothers crisis burst it in 2008. Nothing was seen on the horizon. It
was the offshore projects that came to the rescue, but even the offshore
projects could not survive at the plunged oil price, which, again, created some
niche in Contango that brought a good interest in the tanker newbuildings.
Furthermore, IMO's NOx tier III gave hungry shipyards some comfort with
rushed orders from owners trying to meet the deadline.
2016 will be another difficult year, as
Contango / NOx tier III effect are no longer expected. What should we do? We
have to survive, depending on the market which will always present niche. We
may consider the gas carriers including LNG carriers initiated by Shale Gas
Projects as next savior.
TOPICS.
Top 10 National Topics in 2015 (p.2)
FTA between Korea and China went effective as of Dec 20 (p.3)
Japan expressed official apology for its colonial-era sexual enslavement (p.4)
SKoreans LPGA golfers rocked to the tune of 15 wins
in 32 tournaments in 2015 (p.5)
NKorean leader Kim Jong-un stated that his country
has developed hydrogen bombs (p.6)
Moody's on 19th upgraded SKorea's sovereign credit rating to Aa2 from Aa3 (p.8)
Government estimates GDP growth at 3.1% in 2016, while experts slashed it 2.5-2.8% (p.9)
SKorea's annual trade
surplus reached a record high of $90.4 bil (p.10)
Skorea¡¯s trade volume is projected to decline 10.9% on-year to $978.4 bil in 2015
(p.10)
Amount of FDI to SKorea reached $20.43 bil in 2015, up 11.2% on-year
(p.10)
Mirae Asset was chosen as preferred bidder for controlling 43% stake in
Daewoo Securities (p.11)
SEC and HMC Group compete to develop automotive chips for cars (p.12)
SEC started mass-producing the world¡¯s first all-in-one bioprocessor (p.13)
AmorePacific chairman was selected Forbes Asia¡¯s 2015 Businessman
of the Year (p.14)
Fastest growing sector in Korean economy in the last 4 years is
pharma-ceuticals (p.15)
KOSPI once plunged to 1,927, lowest in 3 months, due to oil prices falling
and US rate hike (p.16)
SKorea's consumer prices rose 1.3% on-year in Dec, at
fastest pace in 16 months (p.17)
Big3 shipyards seems not able to achieve their annual goals in shipsales
(p.19)
DSME delivered offshore projects to Transocean and Songa Offshore (p.20)
KOGAS signed a MOU for global LNG business with ExxonMobil (p.23)
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