Cash-strapped Hanjin Shipping Co. said Sunday that its creditors' extended help is crucial for its survival as its negotiations with owners of chartered ships over a cut in leasing rates and to postpone debt repayments to foreign creditors made significant progress, the Yonhap News Agency reported. The country's No.

Hanjin Shipping on Thursday submitted its plan to boost liquidity to the Korea Development Bank, its largest creditor, but gave little details, JOC.com reported. South Korean financial sources have indicated that the plan involves asset sales beyond the previously disclosed efforts to raise 411.2 billion South Korean won ($357 million) and could reach as high as 700 billion won. Hanjin has already sold stakes in a terminal in Vietnam, a ship, its London office and its remaining stakes in H-Line Shipping, to which it sold its liquefied natural gas and dedicated dry bulk divisions in 2014.

The fate of debt-ridden Hanjin Shipping Co. remains yet uncertain with its parent group having missed the August 20 deadline to submit additional financial support measures to creditors to salvage its shipping unit from heading to court receivership, Pulse reported. All eyes are now on whether the South Korean shipping company would successfully strike a deal with foreign ship owners to reduce chartering fees, a move that is expected to allow its creditors to be more lenient in providing additional financial support.

South Korea's financial watchdog on Sunday said 32 big local firms should carry out restructuring, a move that could be aimed at keeping financially troubled companies from further hurting Asia's fourth-largest economy, the Yonhap News Agency reported. The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) made the announcement after conducting a credit risk analysis on 602 companies, which were selected out of 1,973 owing over 50 billion won (US$44 million) to banks and showed signs of financial health problems.

South Korea is overhauling its capital controls, making it easier to tap overseas markets in a partial reversal of its battle against hot money inflows since the global financial crisis, the Financial Times reported. The move reflects fears that the banking system would struggle were money to suddenly flow out as US interest rates rise. The action, announced jointly by the finance ministry and regulators, came hours after Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen kept alive the prospect of another US rate rise in the coming months.

South Korea’s central bank unexpectedly cut the benchmark interest rate to a new record low Thursday, citing growing risks to the economy including slowing global trade and the government’s push to restructure indebted companies, Bloomberg News reported. The decision to cut the seven-day repurchase rate to 1.25 percent, which was unanimous, was projected by only one of 18 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. While Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was the sole forecaster predicting a cut at this meeting, Citigroup Inc., HSBC Holdings Plc, and Nomura Holdings Inc.

South Korea will pump $9.5bn into state-run policy lenders reeling from huge losses on loans made to the beleaguered shipbuilding and shipping sectors to help them deal with further corporate distress, the Financial Times reported. Corporate restructuring has emerged as the top priority of President Park Geun-hye’s administration as losses balloon in major export industries and the country’s industrial titans struggle to stay afloat under mountains of debt and amid slowing economic growth.

A local court on Tuesday approved a filing by financially shaky STX Offshore & Shipbuilding to be put under a court-led restructuring scheme, paving the way for the shipyard to avert liquidation, The Korea Times reported. Last month, STX Shipbuilding, once the country's No. 4 shipbuilder, filed for receivership to stay afloat as its creditors decided to end a similar rehabilitation program for the shipbuilder. The shipbuilder has been under the control of its creditors since April 2013 amid a protracted slump in the shipbuilding sector.

The hot topic in Korean corporate circles today is undoubtedly the moves by the government and state-run policy banks to bail out the ailing shipbuilding and shipping companies, The Korea Herald reported. Given the importance of these sectors in Korea and their prolonged financial distress, it is understandable that the government has pushed the panic button. The process of bailing them out has been set in motion with some sort of consensus reached between the Finance Ministry and Bank of Korea. BOK Gov.

South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping Co. Ltd., is seeking to put itself under a creditor-led restructuring after a senior government official said the country’s ailing shipping firms may go into receivership if they can’t rebuild their businesses on their own, The Wall Street Journal reported. Hanjin, the world’s eighth-largest container shipping company by capacity, said in a statement late Friday that it will make an official request to turn its debt-restructuring efforts over to its creditors, led by the Korea Development Bank.