Kookmin Bank, also known as KB Kookmin Bank, is a bank headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. It was the largest bank in Korea and the 60th largest in the world as of 2017.[1] The name Kookmin Bank is a contraction of Citizens National Bank, an English name by which it also used to be referred to in the past.
History
The Citizens National Bank was founded by the Korean government in late 1962,[2] initially focused on providing financial services for middle- and low-income consumers. Its privatization process was initiated by the sale of a 10 percent stake by initial public offering in 1994.[3] Meanwhile, Kookmin Bank expanded abroad by opening operations in Luxembourg in 1991, Tokyo in 1992, Singapore in 1994, and Hong Kong in 1996, followed by other locations around the world.[4]
Following the 1997 Asian financial crisis