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(Seoul=NSP News Agency) eunyoung Huh Journalist = KakaoBank, a leading internet-only bank in Korea, is receiving a barrage of complaints from its employees who bought employee shares as the stock price of KakaoBank plunges more than 80% from the peak.

Executives of KakaoBank started buying back the company’s shares and supporting loans for their employees in an attempt to quell the backlashhowever, such makeshift solutions - also undesirable to shareholders - are only frustrating the employees.

On August 6th last year when the company was listed, the employees of KakaoBank had a chance to purchase 19.5% of the employee shares assigned by the employee share ownership plan, which means they bought 12,743,642 shares worth of 497 billion won - 12,500 shares (about 490 million won) per person.

Earlier, executives of KakaoBank have bought back a massive amount of shares after the stock price crashed to about 10,000 won. In response, twelve executives bought 50,685 employee shares for 2 consecutive days from 6th to 7th.

As offering a positive outlook, the CEO of KakaoBank said that he will actively consider to implement its shareholder return policy and that the company will expand its corporate banking services to its 8 million individual business clients.

Despite such efforts, shareholders of KakaoBank have cast a cold eye because the stopgap measures cannot guarantee a long-term increase in the stock price.

KakaoBank has neither provided measures in regards to dividends to shareholders yet, nor taken a competitive measure as private business loans - which KakaoBank is considering as a driving force to a stock price rebound - also prevail among other internet-only banks.

NSP News Agency eunyoung Huh Journalist eunyoung114@nspna.com
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