Report Prudential Unlikely To Buy Hyundai Securities

According to a report from Dow Jones Newswires, Prudential Financial’s negotiations to buy controlling stakes in Hyundai Group’s financial affiliates, Hyundai Investment Trust & Securities Co., Hyundai Investment Management Co. and Hyundai Securities Co., appears unlikely to succeed.

Prudential’s attempt to acquire the two securities trusts and the brokerage company follows a similar attempt by AIG and W.L. Ross & Co. who pulled out of an agreement, signed in August 2001, to buy the companies for around $700 million. The announcement, made in January 2002, led to the South Korean government putting the three companies back on the market.

But Prudential is apparently only interested in acquiring the two investment trusts in order to expand its trust business, while the South Korean government has been insisting on a package deal that includes Hyundai Securities, the brokerage business.

However the DJ article also quotes a local newspaper report indicating that the government plans to sign a preliminary agreement with Prudential as early as the first quarter of 2003 to sell the two trusts. The brokerage unit, would be sold separately in an open auction.

A later report from Reuters, however, indicated that Hyundai officials had denied that this was the case.