Footnote:
In: Global Shareholder Stewardship (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2022
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments January 24, 2022 erstellt
Description:
The Korean Stewardship Code is remarkably similar to the UK Stewardship Code in terms of the language. However, a significant difference lies in the motivation. A major concern in the UK is the dormancy of institutional investors in widely-held shareholding. Conversely, a primary purpose of stewardship in Korea is to keep controlling shareholders in check, particularly by curbing tunnelling of controlling family members. In addition, this Chapter elucidates contents, the enforcement mechanism, the features, impacts, and implications of stewardship in Korea and its related shareholder activism. Another unique feature in Korea is the presence of the National Pension Service (NPS), the largest institutional investor in Korea and the third-largest public pension fund in the world. As an adamant advocate of shareholder activism, the NPS acts as a catalyst in spreading stewardship in Korea. However, since the NPS is a quasi-government agency, there is a concern that the autonomy of investee companies of the NPS may be damaged under the name of stewardship. A related concern is that the government may use stewardship as a powerful policy tool to guide the private sector in a direction associated with a certain agenda that is socio-politically driven but has less to do with the financial benefits of the NPS’s beneficiaries