Looming Face-Off In Asia Over TPP With Korea At The Vortex. Trade pacts can also antagonize non-participants. http://t.co/awr8BpCmco
— tomcoyner (@tomcoyner) October 8, 2015
If any ROK Heads have a few billion dollars lying around you could use it to buy the Korean retail giant Homeplus if you are interested. It will be interesting to see what changes will be made once Homeplus is sold off:
Private equity groups are expected to submit final bids to take over the nation’s second-largest supermarket chain Homeplus, valued at about 7 trillion won ($5.86 billion), amid growing speculation that two Korean retail firms are mulling to join the deal when the preferred bidder is announced, according to sources on Sunday.
Five shortlisted private equity firms formed three consortiums for Monday’s final bidding for Homeplus, wholly owned by Tesco. The British retail giant put up its Korean unit for auction in a bid to scale back the mounting debt and fund a turnaround plan.
Sources said the Korean confectionery company Orion and local retail giant Hyundai Department store are eyeing to join the bid as strategic investors.
“As Orion continues to show a strong will to buy Homeplus, there’s potential that it will link up with a private equity fund to be selected as a preferred bidder,” an official at an investment bank said.
The snack-maker, which failed to make the final list of five bidders, has been seeking a foray into the supermarket industry as its growth slows.
The preferred bidder is expected to be announced in September while the takeover deal to be wrapped up by the end of this year. [Korea Herald]
You can read more at the link.
The Lone Star issue continues to make headlines. This time it is about how Lone Star bribed an activist group leader to essentially shut up. So if there was any doubt, everyone now knows it is illegal to bribe activist groups in South Korea:
A local court sentenced the head of a private watchdog to two years in prison for taking bribes from Lone Star Funds in return for dropping protests over the U.S. firm’s local deal and trying to help it settle a stock manipulation trial.
The Seoul Central District Court ordered Jang Hwa-sik, the head of Spec Watch Korea, also to forfeit 800 million won (US$681,000), he received in 2011 from Yoo Hoe-won, former head of Lone Star’s local unit.
“Despite fairness and integrity expected for him as an executive of an organization whose nature is clearly of public concern, he used his position in taking the heavy amount of financial reward,” the court said.
Jang, formerly a head of the labor union at Korea Exchange Bank (KEB), had led protests against Lone Star’s profit taking in the firm’s purchase and reselling of KEB. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link.
It's son vs son in a battle for control of South Korea's huge Lotte Group. http://t.co/mT2SBHAkv3 pic.twitter.com/dgmaZ76Abc
— Alastair Gale (@AlastairGale) August 6, 2015
Here is an interesting read in regards to the anti-Semitism accusations lobbied against South Korea in the battle over control of Samsung last month. The article provides some context on why Samsung published the cartoons and maybe they were not so anti-Semitic after all:
The predominantly Jewish-owned and operated Elliot Associates has a wealth of self-interest in preventing the Lee family from consolidating its control over the Samsung conglomerate. As racial outsiders, however, Singer’s firm were forced into several tactical measures in their 52-day attempt to thwart the merger. First came lawsuits. When those failed, Singer and his associates then postured themselves as defending Korean interests, starting a Korean language website and arguing that their position was really just in aid of helping domestic Korean shareholders. This variation on the familiar theme of Jewish crypsis was quite unsuccessful. The Lee family went on the offensive immediately and, unlike many Westerners, were not shy in drawing attention to the Jewish nature of Singer’s interference and the sordid and intensely parasitic nature of his fund’s other ventures.
The Lee offensive started with a series of cartoons posted on the Samsung website. Most singled out the manner in which Elliot Associates has enjoyed its remarkable growth by focussing on the purchase of national debts from struggling countries at a fraction of their worth, before using ruthless legal measures to sue those countries for values far exceeding the original debt. On its most basic level, the practice is really just the same as Jewish involvement in medieval tax farming. On the older practice, Salo Baron writes in Economic History of the Jews that Jewish speculators would pay a lump sum to the treasury before mercilessly turning on the peasantry to obtain “considerable surpluses … if need be, by ruthless methods.”[2] The activities of Elliot Associates are really the same speculation in debt, except here the trade in usury is practiced on a global scale with the feudal peasants of old now replaced with whole nations. The above cartoon refers to the specific activities of Elliot Associates in Congo where it originally bought $32.6 million in sovereign debt incurred by that country for the knockdown price of under $20 million. In 2002 and 2003, a British court (tactically chosen) forced the Congolese government to settle for an estimated $90 million, which included that all-important interest and fees. Elliot Associates rapidly became known as the quintessential “Vulture Fund.” (…………..)
n the end, the Lee strategy, based on drawing attention to the alien and exploitative nature of Elliot Associates, was overwhelmingly effective. Before a crucial shareholder vote on the Lee’s planned merger, Samsung Securities CEO Yoon Yong-am, said: “We should score a victory by a big margin in the first battle in order take the upper hand in a looming war against Elliott, and keep other speculative hedge funds from taking short-term gains in the domestic market.” When the vote finally took place a few days ago, a conclusive 69.5% of Samsung shareholders voted in favor of the Lee proposal, leaving Elliot licking its wounds and complaining about the ‘patriotic marketing’ of those behind the merger.
Jewish difficulties in penetrating close-knit Far Eastern monopolies, many of which are open in their belief that Jews are capable and ruthless opponents in business, thus persist. East Asians are seemingly aware that giving Jewish businessmen an inch will normally lead to non-Jews losing a mile. It is this honest grappling with the facts that kept Daniel Loeb off the board at Sony, and prevented Elliot Associates from making even slight gains at Samsung. [The Occidental Observer]
You can read more at the link.
Via the Sawon website they are collecting a list of the most inappropriate business emails in Korea. Some of them are quite funny like ilovemyself@company.com and penismight@company.com. Can anyone think of other funny emails they have seen?:
It’s an epidemic!
Ok maybe that language is a bit strong but it is certainly a trend that needs addressing. Korean workers are guilty of choosing very odd and sometimes inappropriate work email handles. Clearly Korean companies first mistake is that they give their workers a choice of email handle, but I am very appreciative that they have given workers the freedom to make their own mistakes.
Those who have been involved with Korea before at a business or even academic level would have come across this
What’s more surprising is that Korean corporate culture is itself very structured and governed by a very formal set of perceived rules and etiquette, whether it be introductions, exchanging business cards or even having a drink together there is a raft of small but very important etiquette to be observed for Korean business people.
Picture the scenario of exchanging a business card in a Korean business context- you bow and shake hands with your left hand under your right to show respect, you then receive a business card with both hands again to show respect and scan the card politely, in this instance you look down to the email and see something like “ilovemyself@company.com” (by the way that is a REAL example). [The Sawon via Reddit]
You can read more at the link.
140 Samsung unit workers arrested after protesting merger http://t.co/bpoSsk59G4 #Samsung #Hanhwa #Techwin pic.twitter.com/Y43YVWJjk4
— The Korea Observer (@koreaobserver) June 29, 2015
It is going to be interesting to see if the hydrogen fuel cell cars ever catch on because right now I don’t see how someone can buy one when there are so few fueling stations:
Hyundai Motor Co. said Monday it believes hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are the future for eco-friendly cars despite challenges of limited infrastructure and slow sales.
South Korea’s largest automaker has sold or leased 273 Tucson fuel cell SUVs since beginning production in 2013, lower than its 1,000 target, mostly in Europe and California.
Kim Sae Hoon, general manager at Hyundai’s fuel cell engineering design team, said fuel cell cars represent a bigger opportunity than electric cars because competition is less fierce. Hydrogen-powered cars also give more flexibility to designers, he said. They can be scaled to big vehicles such as buses as well as small cars.
They can also be refueled as quickly as gasoline cars while traveling more miles than electric vehicles. The Tucson’s Europe model, called ix35 Fuel Cell, can travel up to 594 kilometers (369 miles) while its U.S. model travels up to 265 miles (426 kilometers) on one charge. It emits water vapor and no greenhouse gases.
High prices and the dearth of fueling stations are barriers to sales of fuel cell vehicles. Hyundai said it will be another 10 years before hydrogen cars start gaining wider acceptance. In the meantime, sales of eco-friendly cars are dominated by hybrid models such as Toyota’s Prius and electric vehicles such as Nissan’s Leaf, which are more affordable than fuel cell cars. [Associated Press]
You can read more at the link.
If it feels like there are less ATMs to use in South Korea you would be right because their numbers are decreasing due to banks losing money trying to maintain them:
As the bankbook fades in popularity, ATMs are beginning to vanish as well. According to the Financial Supervisory Service, the number of ATMs run by domestic banks peaked at the end of 2011 with 56,102 machines and has declined since then, marking 53,562 units last year.
The ATM was first introduced by British bank Barclays in 1967. Back then, ATMs caused as big of a splash in the banking industry as financial technology, or fintech, is making today. As ATMs proliferated, many bank tellers saw themselves becoming redundant. Ironically, as ATMs now fade, the number of bank employees is on rise – to 118,703 last year from 110,529 a year earlier.
One reason for the decline of ATMs is a decrease in bank branches where the machines are installed. Between 2011 and 2014, 64 domestic bank branches and local offices shut their doors, largely due to the rise of internet and mobile banking services.
However, ATMs are disappearing much faster than bank branches. In many cases, this is because the fees charged by the machines are no longer sufficient to make them profitable.
“The income from bank charges made at ATMs isn’t even sufficient for managing the machines, and it is a lot easier to close the machines than to adjust the workforce,” said one business insider. “This is why ATMs installed outside stores are diminishing as well.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read the rest at the link, but banks are losing about $1,500 a month to each ATM they have. Personally I find myself using ATMs less and less due to using a debit card instead of cash. As mobile payment platforms such as Apple Pay become more popular this will further decrease the need for ATMs.
I just don’t see many of the South Korean chain stores ever making it big outside of Korean-American communities. Can anyone picture Paris Baguette in major cities when it would be competing against someone like Panera Bread?. Can anyone think of a Korean chain that could make it big in the US?:
Korean firms are scrambling to set up shop in New York City as a litmus test for how ready they are for the global market. With the growing interest in Korean culture in the U.S., they feel this may be the right time to make inroads into the market.
Cosmetics firms are leading the trend. Amore Pacific opened its store at Bloomingdale’s department store in Manhattan last week, a first for a Korean cosmetic firm.
“To succeed in the global market, you first need to advance into New York, the trend-setting city,” said a company spokesman. Amore Pacific opened its first New York store in 2003 and now operates 26 in the city.
Laneige also opened an outlet in a big supermarket in the U.S. last year. Tonymoly started in New York in August last year and already operates six stores there. [Chosun Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but I think a major luxury hotel brand like Lotte has a chance of gaining some market share in major cities but that is about it. Cosmetics may have a chance of gaining some market share as well, but I think even that will be challenging.
