SEOUL, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) -- South Korean insurers' bad loan ratio hit a 13-year high in the second quarter, continuing to rise on the back of a retail giant's overdue payment and the delayed economic recovery, financial watchdog data showed Tuesday.
The ratio of bad loans, overdue at least three months, among insurance companies reached 1.00 percent of the total at the end of June, marking the highest since June 2012, according to the Financial Supervisory Service.
It kept rising for the past months from 0.93 percent at the end of March and 0.64 percent at the end of December last year.
Homeplus, the country's second-largest hypermarket chain, filed for corporate rehabilitation in March, contributing to the higher bad loan ratio.
The bad corporate loan ratio among insurers jumped from 0.68 percent at the end of last December to 1.10 percent at the end of March and 1.20 percent at the end of June.
The situation of Homeplus was believed to have worsened since the Seoul-based private equity fund, MBK Partners, took over the South Korean retailer from Britain's Tesco in 2015.
MBK Partners, one of the largest PEFs in Asia that manages more than 30 billion U.S. dollars in assets, was accused of unduly leveraging debt to buy blue chips, repaying debt through the sale of core profitable assets and eventually aggravating corporate value. ■
