KT, Shinhan deepen partnership with share swap

Jin Ok-dong, Shinhan Bank CEO, left, and Park Jong-ook, President of KT, at a strategic partnership ceremony held at Shinhan Bank's main branch in central Seoul on Monday. [KT]

KT and Shinhan Financial Group are exchanging more than 400-billion-won ($340 million) worth of shares to jointly collaborate on artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse.

KT, the second largest telecom company in Korea, said on Monday it is acquiring 2.1 percent of Shinhan Financial Group for 437.5 billion won.

Shinhan Financial Group runs Shinhan Bank, Korea’s second largest bank by asset value.

The acquisition will be made on Jan. 26.

In exchange, Shinhan Bank is acquiring 5.46 percent of KT shares for 437.5 billion won. This will make Shinhan Bank the second largest shareholder of KT after the National Pension Service.

KT and Shinhan Bank formed a strategic partnership to collaborate on 23 joint businesses based on their technologies. KT has technologies related to data analysis and natural language processing, and Shinhan Bank on finance. The businesses include AI, the metaverse, non-fungible tokens, big data and robots.

They plan strategic investments and to offer consulting services to startups both in and outside of Korea that have relevant technologies.

Some of the services that may be possible through the partnership includes embedding a finance infrastructure in KT’s metaverse platform or building real estate services on the metaverse app.

“Various digital transformation models are expected to be developed based on synergies” between KT and Shinhan Bank, said Park Jong-ook, President of KT, in a statement.

The partnership will “boost the speed of [Shinhan Bank] to become a digital company,” said a spokesperson for Shinhan Bank.

Shinhan Bank runs Digilog, a bricks-and-mortar branch concept that offers digitized banking services.

BY JIN MIN-JI [jin.minji@joongang.co.kr]