The government in South Korea is making another effort to sell its controlling stake in Woori Bank in July. Its earlier attempts to do so did not succeed. The Public Fund Oversight Committee, a government-run body in charge of privatizing the country’s No. 3 bank, will unveil a new plan in mid-July after wrapping up a feasibility review. Four previous auctions to sell Woori Bank have fallen through due to a lack of bidders, including the latest attempt where only one company had submitted a bid in November last year. Currently, the state-run Korea Deposit Insurance Corp holds a 51.04% stake in Woori Bank. Woori Bank, with 300 trillion won in assets, was established in 2001 by merging five troubled banks in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s. The government has been trying to privatize the mega-sized bank since 2010 to recover the bailout money.
