South Korea to Introduce IPO Cornerstone Investor System from November 13

The cornerstone mechanism is a structural fix aimed at a familiar Korean IPO problem: heavy retail participation and volatile post-listing trading. By rewarding institutions that accept a lock-up with early allocations, regulators are trying to import a practice common in other major listing venues, though its effectiveness hinges on how much genuine price discovery those locked-up investors provide versus simply formalizing existing allocation dynamics. The detail worth watching is the six-month lock-up threshold and whether it attracts long-horizon capital or merely shifts demand among the same institutional pool.