South Korea to Permit Securities Class Actions

The 10b-5 Daily spans the globe to bring you the latest in securities litigation news. The JoongAng Daily has an interesting article on the political battle in South Korea over whether to permit investors to bring securities class actions against corporations. The current compromise is to allow class actions to be brought against any publicly-traded company, but to delay implementation of the new system until 2004.

Quote of note: “The business community fears that the impact of class-action suits would be devastating. Even though the class-action system would not be applied retroactively, tricky bookkeeping has been a long-established practice here. Indeed, even Shin Jong-ik, a senior official at the Federation of Korean Businesses, recently estimated that between half and 70 percent of Korean firms have been involved in accounting fraud.”