StanChart’s Korea Unit to maintain paying dividends

Despite 27 branch closures in 2011, the lender still has no plans to pull out of South Korea.

Standard Chartered Plc (STAN)’s South Korean banking unit will keep paying dividends to its parent company after making its first payment last year, the unit’s chief executive officer said.

The company paid a 100 billion won ($92 million) dividend for 2010 and will continue making payments of a “proper size,” Richard Hill, CEO of Standard Chartered First Bank, told reporters in Seoul on Thursday, in a report in Bloomberg.

Standard Chartered is “committed” to the Korean market and has no plan to pull out of the country, CEO Peter Sands said at the briefing with Hill. Sands spoke after being asked whether the U.K. bank will reduce franchises in South Korea after announcing 27 branch closures this year.