Tomasso also said "gold". The price may sharply drop as here is a funny one from Korea. Every company in Korea is saved! When the going gets tough, the tough gets to try everything ...
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REUTERS in Seoul
South Korea's bankrupt Dong Ah Construction says it has found a shipwreck, but cannot confirm reports it is a turn-of-the-century Russian vessel carrying gold worth 150 trillion won (about HK$970 billion).
The reports pushed the share price of Dong Ah 13.88 per cent higher to a close of 410 won.
But they also raised some eyebrows, since at present prices they would mean the ship had more than 14,000 tonnes of gold on board, some 13 per cent of all the gold ever mined.
"It's true a ship was recently discovered in the East Sea but we have no idea whether it has any gold bars on it at this point," a Dong Ah Construction spokesman said.
South Korean media has reported that the building company, which went bankrupt last month, might have discovered the Donskoi, a ship thought to have smuggled gold during the Russo-Japanese War at the beginning of the 20th century.
Dmitri Donskoi was a 14th century war hero.
The Korea Economic Daily said the ship was rumoured to have sunk during the war while carrying gold bars valued at 150 trillion won.
That is enough money to buy every share of every major company in South Korea, or almost 80 per cent of the market capitalisation of the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI).
But the reports did not cite a specific weight of gold said to be on the ship.
Local media tied the estimate of the gold's value to a former South Korean explorer who said he had read about the gold in history books by a Russian former vice-admiral.
Despite the splash made by the reports, the benchmark KOSPI closed up just 0.18 per cent at 517.89 as afternoon profit-taking reduced earlier gains of as much as 4.57 per cent.
The Dong Ah spokesman said no clues had been found as to the identity of the ship and the project was a closely guarded secret even within the company.
He said the company was spearheading the salvage effort in partnership with the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute. They embarked on the project last year in a bid to discover the Russian vessel after a private company had attempted in vain to find it 20 years earlier.
Recovery of anything valuable could help Dong Ah, formerly the country's second-largest builder, which is struggling for survival under court receivership.
The builder had failed to pay interest on almost 470 billion won in loans for more than six months, main creditor Seoulbank said last month.
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