금융투자회사의 업무확대 - 투자은행 관련 자본시장법 개정방향을 중심으로 -

The Financial Services Commission made a notice of lawmaking back in 2011 June 16 for the introduction of hedge fund tailored for Korea called the “Capital Market and Financial Investment Act(Capital Market Act)”, and on 2011 July 27, the Act was passed to vitalize domestic investment banks and reform capital market infrastructure. Foreign investment banks not only perform undertaking of securities, give advice on M&A, manage assets and private investments but also perform various tasks such as providing risk capitals for emerging companies and risk taking of prime brokers. However, although they are the core medium in the capital market, domestic investment banks only took the role of being a broker due to their financial limitation. With domestic securities companies focusing their activities on trusts and brokerage, they lost their competitiveness, withered in their functionalities as enterprise financial provider, and hence brought the creation of large investment banks. With these limited activities of investment banks in Korea, there have been talks on revising the regulation on making and managing of investment banks. Major revision would be the allowing of enterprise credit, prime broker, and ease of regulation on the use of equity capitals. There are three different organizational structure to revitalize investment banks; ①universal banking system, ②subsidiary of headquarter, and ③independent investment bank. Among the three, the revised 'The Capital Market Act' allows ② and ③ types of organizational structure. However, it is difficult even with the revision of 'The Capital Market Act' as it is realistically impossible for security companies to increase capitals to enlarge themselves, and therefore, it is forecasted that formation of subsidiary would be formed. However, the organizational structure is flexible. That is, a subsidiary can change itself to become an independent investment company and, though not desirable, it can change into an European investment bank. It is true that the Commercial Bank is in need of new source of income as their profit has decreased from traditional banking operation, but a joint operation of investment banking would bring about more risk and investment banking alone would not rid of the risk deriving from traditional banking operation.