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For decades, South Korea's economy has been dominated by conglomerates like Samsung, sk and Hyundai Motor. These business groups are run and controlled by some of the wealthiest families in the country. They have a specific name in Korean chebo.
We call them tebar or Tebell family, so it can be referring to the business group or the family behind this business group.
Bloomberg reporter Yuk Youang Lee covers South Korea's stock market in.
Seoul, tebol are really really big part of the South Krona economy. According to one estimate, if you combine all the turnover of the five biggest chebar that's equal to about almost half of South Korea's growth domestic product as of twenty twenty two.
Yuk Young says Chebol's huge contribution to South Korea's GDP has in return given them unchallenged power. That's despite the long standing criticism that chebols make deals that unfairly benefit the founding families at the expense of other shareholders, But recently that power is being rattled. In September, a bitter takeover battle was launched for control over Korea Zinc, one of the biggest chebols in the mining industry.
Stocks. We're watching a Career Zinc jumping by a record. This is after MVK launches a tender offer to buy a Career Zinc.
That follows, the private equity firm MBK Partners, backed by Korea Zinc's largest investor, tried to wrestle control of the chebol from one of its founding families. The Chebell family that runs Korea Zinc responded with a share buy back, and eventually regulators got involved. Yukjung says the case is sending shock waves across the country.
I've been covering Korean's stock market for more than ten years, and this is really the first time we see individual retail investors exerting big political power, and we saw in this case of the Korea Think how their anger got translated to the regulator's intervention.
And the stakes of this effort to reign in Chebbels may now be higher than ever. Following the events in South Korea last week on December third, President Yunsongyol suddenly imposed martial law and then withdrew it hours later. The act has plunged the country into a political crisis and spooked investors.
Since the martial law declarations, the policymakers are under greater pressure to make sure that global money managers and investors want to put their money in the South Korean stock market, and they have to demonstrate that to one of usters.
Welcome to The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Rebecca Chung Wilkins. Every week we take you inside some of the world's biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons and businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today on the show, the Fight against the Powerful Chebbels, How a cutthroat power struggle over Korea Zinc is rallying retail investors and rattling South Korea's richest families, And what does it mean for Korea's one point six trillion dollars stock market.
The takeover bid for Career Zinc was announced on a Friday, right before a big holiday called Chusock, south Korea's Thanksgiving. Yu Kong says that day, people were already in a holiday mood, ready to travel and gather with families after work, but just twenty minutes before the South Korean stock market open for trading, there.
Was this sudden takeover offer by private equity firm called MBK Partners. What NBK Partner did is that it teamed up with the largest investor in Korea Zinc and they launched a tender offer to buy a controlling stake in Korea Zinc.
You can tell us a bit more about Korea Zinc.
Sure so.
Korea Zinc, first of all is not really a well known outside South Korea, but it's one of the biggest producer of refined metals in the world.
It produces zinc, which is very crucial for the energy transition in the world. It was founded by two families who fled North Korea, and the current generation of this two founder's family have been drifting apart, and now this company is run by one of the grandson of the two founders, mister chair Yunbaum.
MBK Partners, which launched the takeover attempt, is a private equity firm run by billionaire deal maker Michael Bungju Kim, who's known as the godfather of private equity in Asia.
MBK was founded by this ex Gortman banker who was born in Korea and educated in the US, and he once wrote this interesting novel about this young banker who finds himself tangled in the dailings of South Korea's wealthiest families. Now MBK has launched a takeover battle, saying that it wants to improve the corporate governance of Korea Zinc.
So it seems like he's living out his own fictions.
Yeah, I think you can say that.
MBK partners teamed up with Young Pung in launching the tender offer. Young Pung is controlled by the Chang family, the other founding family of Korea Zinc. Before the takeover bid, Young Pung was already Korea Zinc's largest shareholder with a twenty five point four percent steak in the firm. But even so, Young Pung says it has little say in how the firm is run. Instead, Career Zinc is controlled and run by the che family, even though the CEO
Che Yumbum owns less than a two percent steak. But Yukyung says this kind of management is typical in a lot of Chebol companies in South Korea.
A lot of this Chebel company are publicly traded, so the owners of the public companies are actually the shareholders. But in South Korea we often call the Chebot family as the owners of these publicly traded companies, even though Tebo family do not have more than ten percent or twenty percent steak.
In this company, and MBK Partner says this kind of management structure of letting Chebbels have the final say even though they don't own much of the company was one of the main reasons it launched the tender offer alongside Young Pun.
Mbk's argument is that there isn't much independence in the board members or the management because mister Chey, even though he houlds a minority stake in Korea Zinc, basically the side who gets appointed on the Career Zinc's board member seats. So that was the one thing that MBKA said they wanted to fix. Now all these arguments from MBK has been denied by Career Zinc.
When the bid was launched, shares of Career Zinc surged as much as twenty four percent, the most on record. Chay, the CEO, responded in a statement calling MBK Partners a predatory corporate radar, and he soon counted with a share buyback aimed at defending his control of the company.
What happened in the following month is that we saw the series of counter offer to this tender offer and another counter offer to tender offer, and no size trying to yield their position at all.
So how did investors react to all of this?
This was the tipping point when I felt like the public sentimus was turning a little sour against mister chair when mister Chesside decided to sell new shares in the company to raise money for the company. And on that day when the shares sale was announced, the Career Zinc shares just tanked and it probably took a toll on other shareholders.
On that day, Cree Zinc shares tumbled as much as thirty percent that day, wiping some seven billion dollars off its value. Investors were upset with the share sale proposal because the price offered was at a sharp discount to the market price, and they saw it as a move that was all about defending Chase control, and Yukyung says Chase decision didn't just er Career zincs investors, it also hit a nerve with other South Korean investors.
I remember on the day when that decision was announced, a lot of the individual retail investors watching this takeover battle on Fowarding were saying, this is why we don't invest in the South Korean market. This is why we don't invest in tebar because see, the chairman of a company is selling new shares to defend his own management control at the cost of other shareholders in the Korean zinc.
The share sale even prompted regulators to step in the nation's financial watchdog launch a probe to investigate whether the Career Zinc's board intentionally misled investors about the buyback, and two weeks later, Career Zinc, facing increasing public scrutiny, pulled the share sale and che vowed to step down as chairman of the board. He remained CEO as the takeover fight continues. In an interview with Bloomberg last month, chair admitted that share sale was a mistake.
We misread the market. It was perhaps a smart move, but definitely not the wisest move. It was a tactical error on our part. We definitely put the cards before the horse, as they say.
In a statement, Career Zinc says that all measures taken were aimed at protecting the nationally important zinc industry and improving corporate value for all shareholders. MBK Partners says that Chair's unilateral decision making at Career Zinc has hurt its corporate value and shareholders significantly. As for who will win the battle to control Career Zinc, we're likely to find out more about this early next year. As it stands today, MBK and Yung Pung hold just under forty percent of
the stock in Korea Zinc. Chez chares including those of his allies, are at roughly thirty five percent after the break. What Korea Zinc's bitter fight says about the pressure on chebels to change, what it means for the broader economy if those efforts succeed, and what if they don't. South Korea's chebels, or family run conglomerates, are seen as one of the main driving forces behind the country's rapid economic growth after the Korean War ended in nineteen fifty three.
The chebels propelled South Korea to become Asia's fourth largest economy, and today Korea's Fair Trade Commission says that there are more than eighty chebels in the country more than seventy years after the war ended. Some investors field chebels have become more of a liability for the Korean stock market accountable for something called the Korean discount Turbot family.
They have gone from being the engine of growth for a South Korea's success story to hampering the country's growth. When you see South Korean stock markets peers such as Taiwan or Japan, they have been enjoying these market rallies, but now the Chebot family are holding back South Korea from achieving that kind of rally.
Chebols are criticized for making deals that advance families interests rather than prioritizing shareholder value. One of the structures that enable them to do this is the complex web of crossholding among hundreds of listed and private companies, so it can be difficult for everyday investors to figure out who's exactly running the company. And on top of all of that, the families that control the Chebels don't actually want their share prices to go.
Up because the more expensive to share prices are, the more inheritance tax they have to pay, and South Korea has one of the highest inheritance tax in the world.
Criticisms of this Korean discount and the role of Chebels isn't new, but Yukjung says one of the reasons the tide is turning now is because of the growing clout of individual investors. During COVID, the number of retail investors
in Korea doubled. They now account for about two thirds of the market turnover, a powerful force in the market and for the first time, an influential voice in elections too, And that is part of the reason why the government is also joining in on this push to get chebels to change.
Right now, what the financial the leaders are trying to do is that they are trying to make those type of companies to come up with plans to give more money back to shareholders and make sure they do the right things for the shareholders, the general shareholders and not just the minority few founding families. So their roles what they do in the next few years will be really crucial to where the South Korest stock market are headed.
Broader reforms are on the table. The financial regulator is reviewing rules to make it easier for shareholders to secure fair merger terms, as well as changes to protect shareholders' rights when it comes to buying and splitting up companies. So these moves made by regulators with what's happened with Career Zinc. It's all really a reality check for the Chabels, right.
That's exactly right. There will be more public resistant and there will be more regulatory interventions if they don't play with the rules. One of the institutional us and Soul he told me that a lot of the teple should be getting a message from what's happening in Korea Zinc, which is that if you don't really take good care of the shareholders, you may be taking this kind of an external attack or external takeover attempt from outsiders.
So the lesson here is that take a good care of your shareholders and make them happy.
These proposed changes come at a crucial time for the country's economy. Last week, six hours of martial law and a failed impeachment vote against South Korean President Uni sent jitters through the market. Korean stocks tumbled and the one slumped following the weekends events.
Ever since we saw President Union declaring and then lifting the martial law decree, we're seeing on a daily basis of South Krire's top financial and monitor policy makers trying to restore confidence in the South Korean economy.
The Suskrim market.
So even though we experienced some of the weaknesses in the stock market during the first four trading days since the martial law, I think the hope is brewing and there's even bigger motivations for Suskrim policymakers and lawmakers to make sure that the proper reforms go through and the stock market find its proper value.
This is The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Rebecca Cheung Wilkins. Listen to our previous episode on South Korea's short lived martial law, where we unpack exactly what happened on the ground during those six hours and what's at stake for the country's future. This episode was produced by Naomi Young Young and Jessica bec It was mixed by Alex Sigura and fact checked by Young. It was
edited by Caitlin Kenny and Catherine Knight. Naomi Shavin is our senior producer, Elizabeth Ponzo is our senior editor, Nicole Beams de Vaux is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. Please follow and review The Big Take Asia wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps new listeners find the show, See you next time.