[Yonhap News Photo]
South Korea’s largest container carrier Hanjin Shipping was put under creditor-led restructuring Wednesday to keep it afloat through debt rescheduling.
Hanjin Shipping, one of the world's top ten container carriers in terms of capacity, has been reeling under a credit crunch aggravated by snowballing debts and falling freight rates. It is a subsidiary of the Hanjin Group controlled by Cho Yang-ho who also heads South Korea's top carrier Korean Air.
The state-run Korea Development Bank said main creditors agreed to roll over Hanjin Shipping's maturing debt and interest for three months. Over a three-month period, the company is required to complete negotiations on lowering chartered ship fees and extending the maturity of loans held by non-banking institutions.
The move came a day after Cho stepped down as chief organizer of the 2018 winter Olympics in South Korea's eastern ski resort of Pyeongchang.
He has already offered to abandon managerial control of the distressed shipping unit, but creditors have urged him to step up the sale of non-core assets and bring down charter fees before receiving a bailout.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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