Kakao, Naver shares suffer amid regulatory heat in South Korea

Details: 

• Shares of Kakao, which runs South Korea’s largest messaging and social media platform, plummeted more than 10% on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Naver, which owns messaging service Line, slid over 8% to clock its biggest loss in six years.
• However, over the last 12 months, Kakao’s shares have still climbed around 78%, driven by the mammoth listings of its units, Kakao Games and KakaoBank. Naver’s stock has gone up 32% during the same period.

Dive deeper: 

• The hit to the internet giants’ stocks comes amid rising regulatory issues in South Korea, mirroring Beijing’s crackdown on tech titans, which has wiped out over US$1 trillion in value for some of the largest corporations in China.
• Last month, KakaoBank’s shares surged over 70% in its stock market debut in Seoul to make it the country’s largest retail lender by market cap.