South Korean firms raised a record USD16.4bn through initial public offerings (IPOs) last year, more than quadruple that from a year earlier, data from the Financial Supervisory Service showed. The record raised through IPOs was on the back of ample liquidity and an overall bullish stock market sentiment. The number of companies whose shares were listed on the stock markets for the first time also jumped from the previous year’s 70 to 89 in 2021. The data further showed that investors got more interested in new stock listings, with the competition ratio for IPO stocks jumping to an average of 1,136-to-1 last year, up from the 956-to-1 ratio a year earlier.
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