Thursday, January 2nd, 2014
SEOUL, KOREA - As Korea's stock markets are increasingly decoupled from the movements of the global financial markets, the market capitalization ranking of the nation's major companies has declined by a large margin.
According to financial investment sources on December 30, there were 17 Korean companies (including the preferred shares of Samsung Electronics) that made the top-1,000 list in terms of market cap out of the 2,434 global companies in the MSCI All Country index.
The 11 Korean companies on the list saw their rank slide this year. For example, Samsung Electronics was ranked 24th this year from last year's 16th. Other company shares such as Hyundai Motor (240th from 204th), POSCO (396th from 302nd), and Hyundai Mobis (436th from 362nd) all suffered a setback.
Meanwhile, SK Hynix gained its rank to 442nd from last year's 529th. Internet portal Naver also saw its standing soar to 413rd from 767th in 2012. Byun Joon-ho, head of research center at Eugene Investment & Securities, said, "Unlike the United States whose companies are gradually strengthening their competitiveness in newly emerging industrial sectors, there is not much to show for in Korea except Naver. In the medium and long term, the number of Korean companies making the top-1,000 list will be fewer and fewer."