KDIC puts Tomato Bank on the chopping block
Tomato Specialized Bank, the smallest bank in the Kingdom, is attempting to sell a majority stake in its operations in order to dilute the equity stake of its defunct majority shareholder while securing a partner able to help it meet the central bank’s revised minimum capital requirements, bank executives said on March 13. The bank, one of 13 specialised banks in Cambodia, operates a single branch in Phnom Penh with $9.7 million in assets as of the end of 2015. Its majority shareholder, South Korea’s Tomato Savings Bank, filed for bankruptcy in 2011 following a string of bank collapses spurred by investments into speculative real estate. Following the demise of Tomato Savings Bank, South Korean courts ordered state-run Korea Deposit Insurance Corporation to manage and liquidate the bank’s assets in order to recover the money paid to depositors as insurance.
