Top 10 chaebol take up over half of listed firms' output in S. Korea

SEOUL, Feb. 6 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's top 10 conglomerates dominated by taking more than half of the overall industrial output by local listed firms in the first three quarters of last year, spurring concerns over imbalanced growth between large enterprises and smaller companies, data showed Monday. The combined sales of big business groups, commonly called chaebol, reached 470.8 trillion won (US$421.1 billion) in the January-September period in 2011, or 52.27 percent of the 900.8 trillion won tallied for all listed companies, according to a local financial information provider FnGuide. The proportion of top chaebol output is the largest since 2007, a year before the local financial market tumbled in the wake of the U.S. Lehman Brothers debacle. In separate data by Chaebol.com, a corporate information provider on large businesses, the total market capitalization of 90 listed firms affiliated with the 10 largest conglomerates stood at 647.9 trillion won as of end-December last year, or 52.83 percent of the 1,226.6 trillion won overall. The figure jumped more than 10 percentage points from the 40.75 percent tallied in 2007, the data showed. Experts raised concerns that such developments could undermine the overall balanced growth of Asia's fourth-largest economy. More dominance of output by a few conglomerates can result in a collusion or unfair trading, in which a chaebol gives all its outsourcing work to its affiliates, creating a discrepancy between chaebol-related smaller firms and their independent rivals, they said. Industry watchers said that despite the positive influence of the chaebol on the South Korean economy, the government must take policy initiatives that would nurture smaller businesses and allow them to compete fairly in the market vis-a-vis large companies. (END)