Tomato Bank finds a South Korean buyer

Tomato Specialized Bank, Cambodia’s smallest bank, has sold a majority stake to South Korea’s KB Kookmin Card Co for $10.8 million, the culmination of a long search for a buyer after its majority shareholder filed for bankruptcy in 2011.

The state-run Korea Deposit Insurance Corp (KDIC), which took over after risky investments in real estate bankrupted the bank’s previous owners in 2011, announced on Thursday it had sold the entirety of its stake in the bank. “KDIC has clearly done a good job cleaning up the bank, and it looks like they’ve got a price that is somewhere near book value,” said Stephen Higgins, man-aging partner at Mekong Strategic Partners.https://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/tomato-bank-finds-south-korean-buyer