May 08, 2024

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[THE INVESTOR] The financial regulator on June 12 held an extraordinary meeting to discuss allegations of an accounting breach at Samsung BioLogics.

The latest meeting is aimed at giving financial authorities more time to review whether the suspected accounting breach was intentional, according to officials at the Financial Services Commission.

Financial authorities are expected to hold more sessions later this month and early next month to make a final ruling on the issue.

They gave a preliminary notice earlier last month to Samsung BioLogics that it broke accounting rules in 2015, a charge strongly denied by the unit of Samsung Electronics.

Since then, financial authorities have held three rounds of reviews about the alleged accounting breach, but the reviews apparently failed to reach a consensus as FSC officials said there were some “majority and minority opinions” about the case.

The regulatory probe centered on questions about Samsung BioLogics’ sudden profits in 2015.

After years of losses, Samsung BioLogics posted a net profit of 1.9 trillion won in 2015 after it changed the method used to calculate the value of its affiliate, Samsung Bioepis.

Samsung BioLogics has claimed that the change was in line with international accounting standards.

By Song Seung-hyun and newswires (ssh@heraldcorp.com)