Bailouts for ailing financial firms 61.1 percent recouped

Korea has recouped 61.1 percent of the bailout money injected to help troubled financial firms after the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, the financial watchdog said yesterday.

By April’s end, Seoul recovered 103.1 trillion won ($87.4 billion) out of a total of 168.6 trillion won in public funds injected, the Financial Services Commission said. The recovery rate is a slight improvement from the 60.9 percent tallied a month earlier.

The government poured massive sums of taxpayers’ money into troubled financial institutions to rescue them from bankruptcy when the financial crisis erupted 15 years ago.

The retrieval rate has been moving up steadily from 55.4 percent in late 2008 to 59.9 at the end of 2010.

The watchdog also said it had retrieved more than 1.9 trillion won, or 31.9 percent, of the 6.2 trillion won pumped in to stave off market instability in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

This second public fund, which started reaching the market in 2009, was designed to bolster the local financial sector by buying the delinquent loans and assets of bankrupt firms. Yonhap