By Kim Tong-hyung
As financial authorities enter year two of a “one-year plan” to purge the country’s toxic savings banks, there is deafening criticism over how these secondary lenders were allowed to continue their irresponsible lending behavior when their debt levels were turning cancerous.
The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), in response, is willing to put at least some of the blame on the ineptitude of accounting firms that failed to express alarm over the banks.
Regulators slapped six-month business suspensions on four additional lenders Sunday, including market heavyweight Solomon Savings Bank, extending their hit list to 20 banks since they started the clean-up process early last year.