Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world's biggest shipbuilder, said yesterday it would buy a small local brokerage and an asset management firm from South Korean conglomerate CJ Group to advance into the finance sector.

The Korean shipbuilder and its affiliate Hyundai Mipo Dockyard said yesterday that they had signed a preliminary deal to buy a 74 per cent stake in unlisted CJ Investment & Securities and a 7 per cent stake in CJ Asset Management. CJ Investment already owns 91 per cent of the asset manager.