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Korea Report - September, 2015.

The shipbuilding market and the shipping industry are prevailed by the uncertainties, such as oil prices, Chinese economy’s slowdown and the balance of supply & demand. Yes, there are full of uncertainties. However, can we remember any spell of time in the history when the market has firmly stood on certainty? Market is like an animal living on the uncertainties.

Korean shipbuilders are suffering from the loss last year and this year. Especially, Big Three are reported to be broken down soon because of the loss of two seasons. We like to raise a point which has been ignored. They had piled up an enormous fortune during the unprecedented boom time of our era, during 2003-2008. Big Three were the biggest and only real beneficiary in the world through the boom. They had accumulated basic stamina, strong enough to overcome a prevailing loss.

We have an impression that Big Three themselves have exaggerated the incident as an excuse to restructure their loose organization, a byproduct of boom time. After their restructuring, they will be even stronger and healthier. They know that they are the last barrier to protect shipping, shipbuilding and offshore industry of the world.

Let us think about it.          

TOPICS.

President Park attended at the China’s military event and a joint step to press NK (P. 2)

Japan is to abandon its pacifist constitution and takes new rules for collective defense (P. 2)

Park initiates a fund to help young people find jobs (P. 4)

2 Koreas agreed to hold reunions of families on Oct 20-26 (P. 5)

SKorea is to export four T-50 trainer jets to Thailand (P. 6)

Standard & Poor's raised SKorea's sovereign rating one notch from A+ to AA- (P. 7)

Forecasts on Korea’s economic growth have been overly pessimistic in range of 2.2-2.5% (P. 8)

SKorea’s trade surplus hit second-highest level in country's history to $8.94 bil (P. 8)

Market capitalization of SKorea's 10 largest business groups dipped significantly (P. 10)

Kumho Asiana Group is to buy back controlling stake of group holding firm (P. 11)

SKorean oil refiners are geared for major downturn in profits in the third quarter (P. 12)

Authority is to retest the fuel economy of diesel-powered Audi A3 and new A7 cars (P. 13)

Bank of Korea held its record-low key interest rate to freeze at 1.5% (P. 14)

SKorea's consumer price index inched up 0.6% in Sept (P. 14)

Korea signed 172 NBs of 25 mil dwt during Jan-Aug, outpacing China and Japan (P. 15)

HHI is actively selling off stakes in companies to secure more cash (P. 17)

HMD filled most of its 2018 berths, thanks to IMO regulation on NOx (P. 18)

SHI started to receive applications for voluntary retirement (P. 19)

Franklin Templeton Investment Singapore bought 9.970994 mil shares of DSME’s stock (P. 19)

SK E&S is working on its tender for up to 4 x LNGC NBs (P. 21)

Oil majors signed an MOU with Big 3 builders for standardization in offshore plant (P. 21)

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