Free Web NovelI moved separately with KS Group’s Chairman Choi Woosik to a suite inside the Baekje Hotel.
Once Choi Woosik and I sat down, Manager Ma led Chairman Choi’s attendants outside and closed the door behind them.
Before I even bothered listening to his greeting, I went straight to the point.
“You’ve been getting a headache lately, haven’t you? Because of the sovereign fund.”
His lips twitched as if he were about to speak, but his brow tightened. I didn’t give him a chance and continued.
“So didn’t I ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) warn you? That your stake was too small. Hyenas like sovereign funds don’t miss opportunities like this. I told you clearly to straighten out your ownership structure and convert to a holding company.”
In 2003, a two-trillion-won accounting fraud at KS Global was exposed.
Because of that incident, Chairman Choi Woosik and the KS Group executives were all dragged into a prosecutorial investigation.
Fortunately, it didn’t turn into an arrest investigation, but the media hammered KS Group nonstop, calling it Korea’s Enron.
President Yoon Changho immediately ordered the prosecution, the National Tax Service, and the Fair Trade Commission to respond aggressively.
‘That was when KS Group started wobbling.’
Chairman Choi didn’t own much KS Group stock.
Like many chaebol in Korea, he controlled the affiliates through a circular shareholding structure.
KS Group’s stock price naturally collapsed, and the activist fund Sovereign didn’t miss the opening.
Using a subsidiary called Crest Securities, they began accumulating shares of KS Corporation, and in the end secured a 14.99% stake.
Except for special cases like Jungwoo Group, it was unprecedented for a foreign fund to rise to the position of the largest shareholder of a major conglomerate.
“You ignored my warning, and now look at this mess.”
“...Did you call me here just to mock me?”
Choi Woosik bit his lip, speaking with obvious resentment.
I raised one corner of my mouth as I looked at him.
“Well. Mocking, huh......”
* * *
One month before KS Group’s shareholder meeting, Eva came to see me.
Since she was on vacation, she wouldn’t have sought me out unless it was urgent.
Eva walked into my study with her arms full of shopping bags and called out in a lively voice.
“Boss!”
It wasn’t just her voice—her face was glowing with a wide smile, too.
Before she took her vacation, she’d been living like a corpse from exhaustion.
Looks like I really was a slave-driver of a boss.
“You look a lot better, Eva. What’s all that?”
When I pointed at the pile of bags that looked heavy even to carry, she grinned mischievously.
“What do you think? They’re gifts for you, Boss!”
“Gifts? Out of nowhere?”
“It’s nothing special. I was traveling, and whenever I saw something that seemed like it would suit you, I bought it, one by one.”
Eva sat down and set the bags on the table.
Then she began pulling things out and lining them up. It felt like she’d cleaned out an entire department store.
A wallet, a watch, a belt, sunglasses......
“Earrings? My ears aren’t even pierced. Why’d you buy those?”
“Those are obviously mine. Everything else is yours. So? Do you like them? I grabbed anything I thought would suit you.”
I picked up the case with the sunglasses inside.
“Not bad. I’ll wear them the next time I take a vacation.”
“I thought about it forever when I bought those, so of course you should!”
Watching Eva beam proudly, I smiled back.
“Thanks. So you’ve been enjoying your vacation?”
Eva nodded.
“Yeah. I’m traveling around Europe right now. I started in the UK and was going to circle the whole continent. But something urgent came up, so I flew back for a bit. Once this is over, I’m leaving again.”
“What happened that you had to rush back? You could’ve handled it over the phone, or let the people under you deal with it.”
“Mm. I could’ve, but...... no matter how I think about it, this feels like something I have to handle personally. There’s no one who can sit down with you one-on-one, right?”
Eva straightened and wiped the smile off her face. Then she started in seriously.
“Boss, you know a company called Crest Securities?”
“The sovereign fund?”
“Yeah. They contacted us. They want us to hand over the stake we have. No—more precisely, they want us to delegate our voting rights.”
There were things that didn’t change no matter what I did.
So this ended up happening again.
Ever since the IMF crisis, I’d pointed out the problems with circular shareholding and warned him, but Chairman Choi had never come to his senses.
If foreign capital truly wanted to, there were far too many cracks to exploit in the fragile control structures of Korean conglomerates.
That was why I’d warned him from the moment Sovereign started quietly buying shares.
They weren’t buying for investment—they were stockpiling for a hostile M&A. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com
But he hadn’t believed me.
And the result was sitting right here.
“How much KS stock do we have right now?”
“4.9% at Mirae Investment. If you add everything scattered around, it’s about 8.7% total.”
“And the stake Sovereign secured?”
“They spread it across five paper companies and secured 14.9% total.”
So they split into five entities to maximize voting power.
I thought briefly, then asked again.
“How much does Chairman Choi own?”
“Barely 9.7%. Even if you include related parties, it’s around 15%. And he’s supposed to control the entire KS Group with that? Does that make any sense? I seriously don’t understand what Korean chaebol are thinking.”
I chuckled at Eva’s grumbling and replied.
“You can’t think of it the same way as the U.S. or Europe. It was only after the IMF crisis that things got opened up to foreign capital in earnest. Before that, restrictions on foreign capital were extremely strict.”
“Still...... anyway, Chairman Chandler is coming to Korea himself. I’m meeting him tomorrow.”
“What? Chandler’s moving personally?”
I blurted it out without thinking.
Those types usually stayed hidden and hated exposing themselves.
In my previous life, they’d never visited Korea even once.
This, too, must be a variable created by my interference with history.
“Older brother? Younger brother?”
“Both of them are coming, apparently.”
Sovereign’s official name was Sovereign Asset Management. freeωebnovēl.c૦m
But despite the “asset management” label, it was essentially a family office that managed the money of the Chandler brothers—Christopher Chandler and Richard Chandler.
It was a massive investment firm, yet the Chandler brothers themselves were wrapped in secrecy.
And now, not one of them, but both were coming to Korea?
“Looks like they’re going all-in. What do you think their objective is? Management control? Or stock manipulation for arbitrage profits?”
Most funds stirred up control disputes to push the price up, then cashed out.
But Sovereign moved differently.
They were genuinely shaking KS Group.
“From what I can tell, they really intend to take control. They said they already secured KS’s labor union and minority shareholders as friendly forces and added their voting rights. They’re convinced that if we side with them, they’ll win no matter what.”
KS Group really was a juicy target.
KS Corporation—Asia’s largest refiner—was undervalued at a market cap of roughly 1.2 trillion won.
And the value of KS Corporation’s 20% stake in KS Telecom alone exceeded 3 trillion won.
If KS Corporation’s management control changed hands, then because of the circular shareholding structure, most of the affiliates would effectively be handed over to Sovereign as well.
If Sovereign secured control?
They had little interest in growing the company.
They would carve KS Group into pieces, sell it off, and pocket the difference—there was no doubt.
“What do you think, Eva?”
“I’d recommend siding with Sovereign. But you can’t stand seeing Korean conglomerates fall into foreign hands, Boss. Is it because you’re a patriot?”
“I’m not a patriot. I’m a businessman. If someone’s going to eat it, it should be me. KS Group’s too big a pie to hand to someone else.”
I snorted.
Me, a patriot?
Eva was seriously mistaken.
I just hated anyone daring to step into my territory.
“That’s basically the same thing. If you hadn’t stepped in during the IMF crisis, Korea would’ve staggered even more. Foreign capital would’ve slowly eaten up Korea’s assets, and in the end, Korean capital would’ve been corroded by foreign capital......”
“I moved for my own profit, but I can see how it might look that way. That’s one hell of an interpretation. Anyway, your opinion is that we should back Sovereign?”
Eva shrugged and nodded.
“That’s the best way to maximize our profits. What they’re really after probably isn’t KS Corporation’s refining business, but KS Telecom’s shares. And on top of that, they’ll push sales of other subsidiaries.”
“Let’s meet them first and decide. I need to sit down with them myself and negotiate. Come with me.”
“Okay, Boss! I’ll lock in the appointment and let you know.”
With her message delivered, Eva answered crisply and stood.
“Got it. I’ll use the gifts well. Thanks, Eva.”
Instead of answering, Eva gave me a quick wink, waved, and left.
A few days later, I met the Chandler brothers at the Myeongdong Hotel.
“Hello!”
Eva greeted them brightly first, then introduced me.
“This is our boss—Kim Muhyuk.”
I smiled warmly and held out my hand.
“I’m Kim Muhyuk.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Richard Chandler.”
“I’m Christopher Chandler.”
After finishing the handshakes, we sat facing each other.
Richard and Christopher exchanged a few words in whispers, then asked me.
“By any chance...... are you Charlie Kim of Dream High Investment?”
At the uncertain look on their faces, I nodded.
“That’s correct.”
“Was Mirae Investment also your company? We believed it was a Hong Kong-capital asset manager. Was it American capital?”
“Dream High and Mirae Investment are unrelated. Dream High is run by James Han. Mirae is run by Eva. I’m merely the money behind them.”
“Hmm......”
When I answered casually, both men’s expressions darkened.
They’d probably come to Korea thinking they could simply target Eva.
So they hadn’t expected me to exist.
A variable you never saw coming is never a good sign.
Looking at the two men’s stiff faces, I smiled even more deeply.
“I heard your names in Russia. After the Soviet collapse, you invested in Russia, helped privatize multiple state-owned companies, and pushed to improve Gazprom’s management. Thanks to that, you became Gazprom’s second-largest shareholders.”
“......”
The brothers had invested in Russia when no one cared and made a fortune.
That had happened long before I ever entered the market.
The most famous episode was the ousting of Gazprom’s corrupt CEO, Rem Vyakhirev.
After growing Gazprom’s market share by more than double, they sold all their shares and left Russia.
They were giants who had dominated Russia’s capital markets in the 1990s.
If they’d delayed their exit even slightly, they could’ve suffered huge losses after Russia’s moratorium.
“I’d always wanted to meet you, and now here we are. You paved the road so well that it helped me a lot when I invested in Russia.”
I decided that was enough pleasantries and moved to the point.
“You want a proxy for the KS shares held by Mirae Investment?”
Of the two, the older brother Richard Chandler answered.
“Yes. If you help us this time, we can take management control of KS Group. We’ve secured 30% of the voting rights. At the shareholders’ meeting, we will win the vote without fail.”
Thirty percent?
I’d heard Crest Securities had secured 14.9%.
That meant they’d already locked down more than 15% in friendly votes.
“If you’ve secured that much, it sounds like you can win even without Mirae Investment’s shares. You said you have 30%.”
“That’s true. But if Mirae Investment’s shares go to Chairman Choi Woosik’s side, then we’ll lose the proxy fight.”
They looked like they’d already finished all their calculations.
