Korea Investment and Securities Co. won the Dasan Financial Gold Award 2014 in the securities sector in recognition its outstanding performance in recent years, despite tough economic conditions at home and abroad. Its first quarter sales in 2014 amounted to 2.53 trillion won with a profit of 181.6 billion won. Its third quarter net profit of 78.8 billion won led the industry, up 164 percent year-on-year.
The company has been posting excellent results in the investment banking and asset management areas, in addition to the usual brokerage fee income. The company did well in the IPO deals — attracting 15 trillion won in subscription funds when it lead-managed the initial public offering of Samsung SDS in the third quarter of last year. Korea Investment and Securities also did well in the sale of equity linked securities (ELS), coming in at the top in the individual customer sector of ELS sales.
The company is aiming for achieve its vision to be a leading investment bank in Asia by 2020. The company set up outlets in Vietnam and Indonesia last year under its long-term overseas operation strategy. KIS draws up its strategies thoroughly to map out its overseas operations, looking for business areas with good potential. It aims to localize its operations by hiring local people. The company set up an outlet in Vietnam in November 2010, “KIS Vietnam,” which turned in profit in just two years. When the original company was taken over by the company in 2010, it ranked 60th in the securities industry in Vietnam, but now it is 20th and is expected to climb to 5th next year.
The company has been very well known for hiring only talented people and gives them good training. They rarely quit the company to leave for another company.
Korea Investment and Securities has been looking overseas in pursuit of profits, with its office in Jakarta having opened in Dec. 2, which is the seventh overseas office to be established, following the Hong Kong office (set up in 1974), the London office (established in 1994), the New York office (set up in 2001), the Singapore office (in 2008), The Hanoi office (2010) and the Beijing office (also in 2010).
The company did not jump into these overseas offices to make a quick buck. It has been a deliberate, long term strategy, one that has moved slowly but surely with thorough analyses of the markets they operate in. The company’s Vietnam operation is representative of its overseas operational style.
The established KIS Vietnam, a local joint venture securities firm in 2010, to make the firm a center of the company’s operation in the S.E. Asian country. The company began to show profits in only two years since the takeover. What KIS did to the Vietnamese securities firm was to introduce HTS (home trading system), an online transaction service system, to the operation of the Vietnamese affiliate. The move was a big factor in boosting the Vietnamese affiliate to 20th in the securities industry in Vietnam from 60th.
In addition, the Beijing Jinyu Investment Consultation Co., which opened in November 2010, has been acting as a window for the company’s operation in China in such areas as IPOs for Chinese firms, investment banking, and has been the bases for qualified domestic institutional investors, as well as qualified foreign investors this year. Beijing Jinyu Investment Consultation posted 102.9 billion won in the first half profit, with accumulated sales through Q3 coming to 2.533 trillion won and profit amounting to 181.6 billion won. That was tops in the industry.
The company’s stable operation would be a great help to its mother company, Korea Financial Holdings, with its share price likely to jump. An analyst with HMC Investment and Securities said the company’s customers’ assets have been rising, with sales of mid-level risk and mid-level profit commodities also expanding to join with other sectors of the company’s operation in profit earnings, except trust account fees. Synergy between asset management and asset operation has been rising, the analyst noted.
