Keangnam Enterprises Ltd., a local builder at the center of a bribery scandal involving several political heavyweights, is poised to be delisted from the main stock market as its cumulative loss has eroded its equity capital, the bourse operator said Tuesday.
Trading of Keangnam shares will be terminated on Wednesday as the company has failed to deal with mounting debt, according to the Korea Exchange.
Keangnam leaves the local stock exchange 42 years after becoming the nation’s first construction company to go public.
The main bourse operator has been in the process of delisting the builder after creditors last month rejected its request for additional financial support and its attempts to go into court receivership fell through.
The builder had been struggling in the red in recent years amid a prolonged slump in the local housing market, suffering annual losses of 182.7 billion won and 310.9 billion won in 2014 and 2013, respectively.
Last week, its former chairman, Sung Wan-jong, committed suicide in the midst of a widening probe into his company and other state firms involved in the overseas development projects pushed during the former Lee Myung-bak administration.
During Lee’s years in office from 2008 to 2013, local companieslaunched expansive business projects to secure energy resources.
Sung, who had served as a ruling lawmaker between 2012 and 2014, left behind a list of politicians, including close aides to President Park Geun-hye, whom he claimed to have given up to several million dollars. (Yonhap)
