Shinhan Financial Group (SHG) to retire 10.84M shares after buyback completion

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In a new disclosure, Shinhan Financial Group Co. Ltd. (SHG) said it completed its share repurchase program on Jan. 30, 2026 and will retire 10,840,573 common shares, putting the retirement date at Feb. 6, 2026. The company also corrected an earlier announcement to update the class, number, estimated amount and retirement date tied to the buybacks.

SHG stock chart

SHG

Retirement trims outstanding stock by roughly 2.15%

The headline numbers are straightforward: Shinhan plans to cancel exactly 10,840,573 common shares and reports an estimated book-value amount to be removed of KRW 799,999,984,300. That book-value figure describes how the company will record the reduction on its balance sheet — it’s an accounting measure of the equity being retired, not the market value of those shares.

Put in context, that 10,840,573-share retirement is roughly 2.15% of the company’s most recently reported 503.45 million shares outstanding. You can see the company’s published outstanding-share figure in the reported shares outstanding. A low-single-digit cut like this won’t rewrite ownership structures, but it does reduce the float and is the classic way companies try to concentrate earnings among fewer shares.

Shinhan said the cancellation follows the completion of its buyback program at the end of January. The earlier announcement — which dated back to July 25, 2025 — has been amended to correct the class, number and amount to match the actual repurchases that finished on Jan. 30, 2026. The update with the corrected details is available in the Jan. 30 update.

Investors watching market signals will note Shinhan’s stock closed at 58.33 on Jan. 30, 2026, slipping about 2.16% that day; its RSI sits near 65 and the shares are trading above both the 20- and 50-day moving averages — data visible in recent trading. In plain terms, the company completed buybacks while the shares showed short-term technical strength, which can occasionally magnify the impact of cancellations on per-share figures like EPS.

What this means for the balance sheet and shareholders

There are three practical takeaways for investors. First, share cancellations generally increase basic earnings per share because the same earnings are spread over fewer shares. With a ~2.15% cut in the share count, EPS improvement will be modest but measurable, all else equal.

Second, the company described the KRW 799,999,984,300 number as a book-value amount to be cancelled. That tells you how Shinhan will record the transaction in shareholders’ equity — essentially removing the treasury shares at their book carrying value. That is an accounting entry and doesn’t directly reflect what those shares would fetch on the open market.

Third, and important for corporate law and investor protections, Shinhan said the cancellation will not reduce paid-in capital under applicable Korean commercial rules. In short, the retirement removes shares from the share count without shrinking the company’s legal capital. The practical upshot: balance-sheet bookkeeping will change, earnings per share should tick up slightly, but the company’s legal capital base remains intact.

For holders who focus on ownership percentages, this isn’t a takeover-style move. A 2.15% cut nudges math in favor of remaining shareholders rather than materially altering control or strategic ownership stakes.

How to follow this story

The key near-term milestone is the retirement date of Feb. 6, 2026 — that’s when the shares are expected to be formally removed from outstanding counts. After that date, look for updated per-share metrics in Shinhan’s next investor communications and periodic financial statements where the company will reflect the cancelled shares and the associated KRW book-value adjustment.

For investors, the cancellation is a modest positive: it tightens supply, should be mildly accretive to EPS, and keeps legal capital unchanged. If you’re weighing the move against valuation, watch whether management signals further buybacks or capital-return plans and whether the market gives the company multiple expansion for executing the program.