Major law firms are thriving on providing legal advice for high-profile litigation involving big Korean chaebol firms

June 6, 2013 Leave a comment

2013-06-05 20:46

Law firms thrive on chaebol plight

By Kim Tae-gyu
Major law firms are thriving on providing legal advice for high-profile litigation involving big firms, industry officials said Wednesday.
“The legal fees for the first trial of SK Chairman Chey Tae-won are known to be higher than 10 billion won. And there are a number of pending lawsuits involving chaebol tycoons,” said a lawyer who asked not to be named.
“From their perspective, the 30-plus firms associated with the four-river project probes are also their potential customers. They would be simply happy with the windfall.”
Currently, the domestic law firm market is ruled by perennial run-away leader Kim & Chang, followed by a few second-tier groups like Bae, Kim & Lee and Lee & Ko.
Through luring many influential former bureaucrats, judges and prosecutors onto their payroll as de-facto lobbyists, such big players almost dominate the market for large-sized legal services including the above-mentioned cases.“Chaebol tycoons would pay no matter how high the fees law firms want, as the latter successfully defend them,” the lawyer said.
SK Group Chairman Chey is now behind bars for embezzling company funds after a group of top-rated lawyers headed by Kim & Jang failed to get him off despite charging a high fee.
An appeal is underway, but this is being handled by lawyers from Bae, Kim & Lee.
“It’s a heyday for big law firms, with a number of chaebol tycoons relying on them to win legal battles,” another lawyer said, declining to be named.
Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn, who was also imprisoned for breach of trust and embezzlement, has taken his case to the Supreme Court after losing at trial and in the first appeal.
CJ Group Chairman Lee Jay-hyun is also set to face a lengthy legal battle as the prosecution investigates allegations that he created a massive slush fund.
Investigations on the four-river project would be far more lucrative for law firms as many big firms ― a total of 31 ― are embroiled in the prosecution’s intensive probe.
Most of the country’s major builders are included in the list.
The former Lee Myung-bak administration channeled more than 22 trillion won into dredging the beds of the country’s four largest rivers and improving adjacent areas.
Major local contractors greatly benefited from the mega project designed to boost the moribund economy in the wake of the global financial crisis in the late 2000s.
They face several charges including collusion to win the government project at inflated prices to improve their bottom lines with taxpayers’ money.

Filed under Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment