Hanjin Group, Korea’s ninth-largest chaebol, is speeding up its group restructuring by giving more power to the owner’s children

December 26, 2013 Leave a comment

Hanjin Group owner’s son CEO of Hanjin KAL Holdings

Dec 26,2013

BY JOO KYUNG-DON [kjoo@joongang.co.kr]

Hanjin Group, the nation’s ninth-largest chaebol, is speeding up its group restructuring by giving more power to the owner’s children.
The group, which owns the country’s top flag carrier, Korean Air Lines, conducted an executive level reshuffle on Christmas Eve, and Executive Vice President Cho Won-tae, the only son of Hanjin Group Chairman Cho Yang-ho, became CEO of Hanjin KAL Holdings, the holding company of the group established Aug. 1.
The CEO position of Hanjin KAL Holdings became vacant when CEO Suk Tae-soo moved to Hanjin Shipping. Cho’s role will be to oversee the group’s business strategy and KAL sales, and take charge of business management support.
“Vice President Cho Won-tae’s appointment to Hanjin KAL Holdings CEO is in the group’s plan to pursue consistent business strategy and policy as well as strengthen responsibility in management,” the company said in a release.
This year’s reshuffle also promoted Cho Hyun-min (Emily Cho), second daughter of Cho Yang-ho, to senior vice president. She is in charge of KAL’s communications and PR activities. Cho’s older sister, Cho Hyun-ah. is in charge of KAL’s in-flight services and hotel business.
Besides the owner’s children, the group promoted 23 other executives, including Seo Yong-won, senior executive vice president of KAL, to president of Hanjin Corp.
Meanwhile, KAL’s smaller rival, Asiana Airlines, saw its CEO replaced in the reshuffle of Kumho Asiana Group. The group said Air Busan CEO Kim Soo-cheon will lead Asiana. Kim, 57, was credited with putting the low-cost carrier in the black for the past four years.
Asiana said President Yoon Young-doo, who has been leading Asiana Airlines for five years, will be a company adviser.

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