The head of the Financial Supervisory Service, Lee Bok-hyun, who noted that a revision of the Commercial Act was necessary for the domestic securities market, faced criticism in the National Assembly after shifting his position to favor the Capital Markets Act. In response, Lee said, "My personal view that improving governance structures to protect general shareholders is necessary remains unchanged."
On the 18th, during the National Assembly's political affairs committee inquiry, Lee stated, "For the revision of the Commercial Act that the opposition party has reviewed, we must consider the issues that arose related to the merger of listed companies, and with the number of unlisted companies exceeding 1 million, we need to carefully examine whether additional regulations should be introduced for them."
As recently as June this year, Lee had said that the Commercial Act should be revised rather than the Capital Markets Act. The essence of the Commercial Act revision is to expand the target of a director's duty of loyalty, currently limited to the company, to shareholders. At that time, Lee said, "Limiting the duty of loyalty of directors to the company does not align with global standards."
However, in less than half a year, Lee revealed concerns that revising the Commercial Act could lead to unintended consequences due to its broad scope. The Capital Markets Act revision proposal suggests that whenever companies infringe on shareholder value, measures should be taken locally to improve the law for methods such as asset divestiture or capital increases. This was also the reason why Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Kang-il criticized him, saying, "Isn't it the case that you've expressed strong opinions before but have recently been inconsistent?"
On that day at the National Assembly, Lee said, "Whether the principles are established in the Commercial Act or the Capital Markets Act, it is inevitable to revise the Capital Markets Act, as various procedural rules are needed to implement those principles."
During this meeting, Financial Services Commissioner Kim Byeong-hwan also agreed with Lee's opinion. Kim noted, "While I fully agree with the intention of improving governance through the revision of the law, I cannot ignore the resulting side effects."
Meanwhile, the Financial Supervisory Service announced it would investigate whether there was unfair trading in light of increased trading volumes of political theme stocks following the 12·3 state of emergency. Lee said, "I am heightening vigilance beyond usual, considering the possibility of spreading false information or various unfair transactions related to political theme stocks."
When actual stock prices surge, the Korea Exchange has seen the number of investment warnings and alerts issued to the market increase by about two to three times since the state of emergency. In regard to this, Lee said, "It seems that volatility will be somewhat greater at the end of the year and beginning of the new year, so I am keeping an eye on it."