November 20, 1999	atimes.com

The Koreas Daewoo crisis may stall Moody's upgrade of S Korean banks SEOUL - Moody's, which inspected 10 Korean banks to decide whether to upgrade their credit ratings, showed deep interest in the effect of the Daewoo Group's restructuring on the banks, industry sources said Friday. The ratings agency focused on each bank's loan volume to the group. The inspection team also showed interest in whether the Hyundai Group can lower its debt ratio to 200 percent or less this year during its inspection from November 8 to 12. Moody's showed a negative view on the upgrade of credit ratings of commercial banks that are at ''speculative grade'', saying the banks are vulnerable to substantial risk from corporate restructuring. Credit ratings of the banks that are marginally exposed to Daewoo, including Housing and Commercial (KSE: 27460), Shinhan (05450) and Kookmin (23130), are expected to get upgrades accordingly, while those of banks that loaned heavily to Daewoo were unlikely to, sources said. The credit ratings of Housing and Commercial, Shinhan and Kookmin are ''Ba1'', the highest grade in ''speculative grade''; Hana (07360), Hanvit (00030), Cho Hung (00010) and Korea Exchange (04940) one notch lower at ''Ba2''; and Korea First (00110), Seoul (02860), Pusan (05280) and Taegu (05270) ''Ba3.'' The Moody's inspection team said, however, that the credit ratings of three state-run banks whose credit ratings are an investment grade of ''Baa3'', or with the same ratings as the present sovereign rating, will be co-ordinated according to the sovereign credit ratings. Moody's will examine the outcome by next week and announce whether to upgrade ratings this month at the earliest. (Asia Pulse/Yonhap)

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