Hanwha Ocean, which faced a setback in the Canadian submarine project, sold approximately $2 billion (about 3 trillion won) in the won-dollar currency futures market on July 10, according to a source cited by Reuters.
Following this news, the won strengthened, causing the won-dollar exchange rate to drop to 1500.0 won.
Reuters noted that Hanwha Ocean's dollar sale coincided with efforts by South Korea's foreign exchange authorities to prevent the won from weakening, as well as expectations of reduced foreign selling in the domestic stock market and anticipated inflows of foreign capital due to SK Hynix's issuance of American Depositary Receipts (ADRs). This dollar sale occurred amid signs that the recent strength of the dollar and weakness of the won may be stabilizing.
On the previous day, SK Hynix announced that it had set the public offering price for its ADRs at $149, issuing a total of 177.9 million shares to raise $26.57 billion, or about 40 trillion won. This surpasses Alibaba's $25 billion, making it the largest IPO by a foreign company in the U.S. Additionally, Moon Ji-sung, the Deputy Minister of International Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, stated in a call with Yonhap Infomax that the current exchange rate remains misaligned with fundamentals. He suggested that supply and demand in the second half of the year would gradually reflect fundamentals, indicating a potential decline in the won-dollar exchange rate.
Meanwhile, Hanwha Ocean lost out to Germany's ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) in the announcement of the preferred bidder for the Canadian Submarine Project (CPSP), which is valued at up to 60 trillion won, on July 6 (local time).
* This article has been translated by AI.
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