The Natural Gas War (5)
Witness something truly astonishing and the mind blanks out. That was precisely the atmosphere blanketing the business world right now.
The chaebols muttered in dazed confusion.
“The chairman of Seonkang Group lost? Everything was stacked in his favor! How did it flip so suddenly?”
The Natural Gas War.
It was the showdown that had every eye in finance and industry glued to the spectacle.
It almost looked like a second-generation heir and a third-generation heir going at each other in public.
Honestly, more than a few of the chaebols had been thinking the same thing.
Chairman, please crush that arrogant third-generation brat!
The way he swaggered around talking about memberships had pricked their pride.
In the early going… no, right up through the middle stages, Seonkang Group had been riding high.
It was a textbook upward trend, and plenty of buyers had piled in right behind the Seonkang chairman.
That much was certain.
And then, in the space of a single “huh?”, the board had flipped.
After the tidal wave of the natural gas crash swept through, the only ship still floating was Lee Jaseung’s.
“He actually won this?”
“What happened to the Seonkang chairman?”
“He stormed into NB Securities and raised absolute hell. He’d already lost a hundred billion, and then the margin call forced him to liquidate—another twenty billion gone on top of that.”
“……Oh.”
A moment of silence.
Twelve hundred billion won was enough to buy an entire Gangnam office tower.
Better not schedule anything with Seonkang Group for a while.
Everyone shared the same thought and hurriedly changed the subject.
“What about Lee Jaseung?”
“Over there it’s practically a heroic saga.”
Lee Jaseung had made no effort to hide the investment process.
Why would he?
Specialness only becomes expensive when everyone knows about it.
Thanks to that, the employees at Seoseong Securities were going around raving about how fantastically thrilling the whole thing had been.
The numbers kept getting inflated, and the story grew more dramatic with every retelling.
In the process, his previous investments were re-examined in reverse order, almost like a reverse-run chart.
“U.S. Treasury yields: 121 percent. Facenote: 96 percent. Gas futures: 365 percent.”
“Insane.”
“Honestly I could still write Facenote off as luck, but you can’t call this one luck anymore.”
Hitting returns like that three times in a row was the same as winning the lottery three times running.
He’d done something even luck couldn’t pull off—so this was pure skill.
“The consulting side still needs more time to prove itself, but the investment ability is rock solid.”
“Think he’ll bring another deal like this next time? I’d love to get a piece.”
“If you’re interested, you’d better hurry. I hear the Platinum membership already has a waiting list overflowing.”
The membership controversy quietly died.
With returns like this, charging an annual fee is only fair!
Three hundred billion for the annual fee… is too steep, but Platinum is only fifty billion.
People started eyeing the cost-effective(?) Platinum tier.
One stubborn fact, however, still held them by the ankles.
“Even if you become a Platinum member, you still have to compete for investment slots. I heard Chae Eunchae got shut out of the first-come-first-served this time and couldn’t even get her foot in the door?”
“Who, me?”
“Gasp!”
Chae Eunchae joined their table with a little upward curl of her lips. There wasn’t the slightest trace of wounded pride on her face. She let out a laughing little hum, almost singing it.
“Hmm-hm-hm.”
“……?”
“I just invested on my own.”
“You already knew the information?”
“Well, just the basics? That gas futures were going to fall.”
Chae Eunchae answered with easy nonchalance.
Watching the door slam shut right in front of her face had stung more than a little.
She had paid the fifty-billion annual fee and still failed to land a single investment opportunity.
So she had timidly, very carefully, invested just a tiiiiiny bit of her own money.
“I just tried following along privately. I am a fund manager, after all, aren’t I?”
“So did you make any money?”
For a second Chae Eunchae’s nose tilted a little higher. She drew a V with her fingers.
“Double!”
“Huuuh! Double!”
If Lee Jaseung had seen it he would have clicked his tongue and called it the absolute pinnacle of inefficiency—but she had still pulled off a 2x return!
By ordinary investment standards it was an enormous result.
Especially when the only information she had been given was a single line: natural gas prices will fall.
Greed flooded the eyes of everyone who heard her.
“Really? You made that much even without getting a seat at the table?”
“Yep. Even the crumbs that fall are sweet. And once you’re Platinum you get one piece of information every quarter, right? I used that to dig up a solid investment opportunity of my own……”
Chae Eunchae switched straight into sales mode.
This is the perfect chance to win back the clients I’ve been losing!
Consecutive underperformance had her clients quietly hovering their fingers over the redemption button.
But the information Lee Jaseung had given her had let her uncover a brand-new opportunity!
Chae Eunchae pulled out a thin investment summary.
A startup called Instalink. Fifteen percent return guaranteed even in the worst case……
“It’s a startup called Instalink. Fifteen percent return guaranteed even if you can’t eat…… hey, where is everybody going?”
The people around her were already standing up, phones in hand, shifting from foot to foot.
Custom information too? Platinum really might be worth trying.
They wouldn’t cut people off first-come-first-served again…… right?
I need to call first!
Chae Eunchae flailed her hands in panic.
“Hello? Excuse me, people?”
Whoosh—
“Ah! This time it’s really certain, I’m telling you!”
KG Group.
Gil Donggyu, soon to be promoted to president of KG Electronics, was meeting with executives and receiving briefings on current issues.
Today’s focus: the Mobile Business Division, the core of KG Electronics.
“Smartphone market share is down 2.8 percent year-over-year.”
KG Electronics was pouring everything into the smartphone business, but the numbers still refused to look good.
Squeezed by Seoseong Electronics on one side and A-Phone on the other.
The reason Gil Donggyu had needed four hundred billion won in the first place was to find some kind of breakthrough.
Just then the door to the division head’s office opened and a secretary slipped quietly in to whisper to Gil Donggyu.
“A letter from Makers. You said to report it immediately, so I brought it.”
“!”
Gil Donggyu’s muscles locked for an instant. Numbers began dancing inside his head.
Four hundred billion, four hundred billion, four hundred billion, four hundred billion!
The money he had been waiting for.
His own precious capital, desperately won after throwing himself into the gambling pit.
Gil Donggyu forgot the division head sitting right in front of him and tore the letter open.
Then he froze solid.
“…….”
One minute passed.
“…….”
Even after five minutes, Gil Donggyu did not so much as twitch.
An eerie silence settled over the division head’s office; the division head grew flustered.
What’s wrong with him? He looks exactly like someone who fainted while still standing…… wait, don’t tell me?
The division head carefully reached out a hand.
“Um……”
At that exact moment Gil Donggyu shot to his feet. The sudden movement of that massive body made the division head flinch and jerk backward.
Is something wrong? Bad news?
He studied Gil Donggyu’s face, but it was the same cold, clear-eyed expression of a corporate executive as always.
Gil Donggyu spoke with perfect courtesy.
“I’m sorry, but I’d like a moment alone. Would it be all right if we took about thirty minutes and continued afterward?”
“A break is fine, but……”
This is my office, though?
Yet when a two-meter mountain of muscle fixed him with an intense stare, leaving seemed like the only option. The division head hurriedly gathered his papers and bolted from the office.
“Ah, yes. We’ll pick it up again later.”
The second the division head was gone, Gil Donggyu locked the door first.
Click.
Then he yanked every blind shut.
Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh—whoosh—
He threw his broad chest open wide, drew a deep breath, and—
Hoo-hoo-hoo-huk!
—let out a roar.
“Uoooooooooh!”
Shoulders bouncing in a little victory dance, he stared at the investment report again.
“Four hundred and eight billion eight hundred million!!!!!! Waaaaaah!!!! Yes! Yes! It’s done!!!”
One hundred twenty billion had come back as four hundred billion!
Of course you make money at the gambling table!!
Gil Donggyu was flooded with pure relief.
He had made four hundred billion won.
The hair-raising gamble had succeeded.
The real reason he had needed four hundred billion was that he had been running a pilot project without any support from the group.
Four hundred billion plus the hundred billion I already have makes five hundred billion. Add a consortium on top of that and the acquisition funds will be more than enough.
At last he had built the foundation for the new business.
Every ounce of the anxiety he had carried until now washed clean away.
I owe him. I should treat Jaseung to a really expensive meal. That bastard’s sharp, isn’t he?
Makers Office.
A place that was normally silent as a tomb had, for the past several days, sounded exactly like a call center.
Platinum membership inquiries were pouring in like mad.
An employee repeated the same line he had already said a hundred times that hour.
“The Platinum tier currently has thirteen people on the waiting list alone, so we are not accepting additional applications at this time.”
“Then at least let me put money into the fund! Just committing capital gets me Gold, right?”
The employee’s face turned awkward.
“I’m sorry. We are not accepting investment capital either.”
“What did you just say?! Why not!”
“We have no plans to open a new fund for the time being.”
“Th-the one-trillion-won fund?”
“That one is already closed.”
A brief silence followed. Then the explosion.
“I’m telling you I’ll wire a hundred billion right now! I’m offering you money—why won’t you take it!”
Right then Seo Minjae stepped out of the elevator and witnessed the scene. He walked past the desk with a small smile.
In the end he hit the target.
Perception of the membership had flipped completely.
Consulting might still be unproven, but the investments were rock solid.
Black might be expensive, but Platinum more than paid for its own fee.
That was the unanimous verdict circulating through the business world these days.
The operation that people in Yeouido had called pure art, the investment that had dragged even Seonkang Group into the fray and turned the entire chaebol world upside down—
—had actually happened over nothing more than a single membership.
What a strange bastard.
Seo Minjae opened the door to the CEO’s office. Lee Jaseung was leaning back against the sofa. Seo Minjae grinned and waved a document envelope.
“Profit report’s here.”
Lee Jaseung reached over the back of the sofa and took the papers.
He checked the final profit first and allowed himself a satisfied smile.
“Finally got a little money together.”
“‘A little’? Anyone hearing that would think you only made a few tens of millions.”
“A few tens of millions? Is that even money?”
“…….”
The total profit Lee Jaseung had generated came to exactly 1.37 trillion won.
Of that, his own share was 750 billion won.
Six hundred billion in returns on his own capital.
One hundred fifty billion in fee income.
After staring at figures like fifty billion and one hundred fifty billion for so long, looking at 750 billion felt like the first real breath of air.
At last he had a foundation solid enough to actually start doing something.
Lee Jaseung set the report on the table and asked,
“What about the thing I asked you to look into on Gil Donggyu?”
Running this investment had left him certain of one fact.
Gil Donggyu needs four hundred billion won.
But why?
It felt too strange to chalk up to a simple new business.
Normally when a major conglomerate wants to pursue a project, the group itself puts up the capital first.
They scrape funds together internally; only if that still falls short does an individual put up private money.
For a chaebol family member to try raising four hundred billion won personally, outside the company, was highly unusual.
He had been slipping in and out of the future gathering information, yet he still hadn’t found a clean answer.
A personal venture? Or is there some internal tangle?
Or both.
That was why he had asked Seo Minjae to dig.
If Gil Donggyu needed money, word would have been circulating through the financial sector.
“The rumor is he’s looking into acquisition financing.”
“Acquisition financing? I haven’t heard anything about KG Group buying something.”
“It’s not KG Group. Donggyu hyung is looking into it personally.”
Lee Jaseung’s eyebrows lifted a fraction.
An individual, not the company, shopping for acquisition financing?
“What is he trying to acquire?”
“A semiconductor company called Hitex. The situation there is a little complicated. Looks like KG Group is running it as a pilot project.”
“Acquiring Hitex as a pilot……”
A contradiction in terms.
“Pilot” meant testing something on a small scale.
But a corporate acquisition was, by nature, a major decision.
And Hitex was a three-trillion-won company.
Not the kind of business you run as a “test.”
Gil Donggyu wants to acquire Hitex. But inside KG Group they have reduced it to a pilot project.
The answer was obvious.
“So Gil Donggyu wants to buy Hitex, but he ran into opposition from the group.”
“Huh? That’s right. How did you know? You know Hitex used to be a core KG Group affiliate, right?”
“A long time ago, yeah. During the IMF crisis?”
“Exactly. It was a KG affiliate back then, but the government forced them to sell it off during the IMF.”
It must have left a bitter taste in KG Group’s mouth.
They still refused to attend Federation of Korean Industries meetings; their pride had taken a serious hit.
“Anyway, the creditors approached KG Group first. Since it used to be theirs, they asked if they wanted to buy it back.”
“And KG Group turned them down?”
“Right. Paying their own money to reacquire something that used to be theirs felt too expensive. Officially the group rejected it.”
Lee Jaseung gave a short laugh.
“But Gil Donggyu is in favor of the acquisition? So it got pushed onto him personally?”
“Exactly. Because Donggyu hyung can’t let it go, they slapped the name ‘pilot project’ on it and let him run with it. No group support—basically a private venture.”
“So that’s why he was running around like a frantic single parent. Not exactly the job of a teenage head of household.”
The pieces were falling into place in an interesting way.
Lee Jaseung fitted the fragments of the future together.
An acquisition without group support…… so that was why the future looked the way it did.
In the future, Gil Donggyu never entered the acquisition battle.
Only Seonkang Group stepped forward as the sole acquirer, and Hitex became SG Hitex.
Gil Donggyu’s shadow was nowhere to be seen.
Had he given up?
Or had he been forced to give up?
“Seo Minjae.”
“What?”
“Do you think Gil Donggyu is going to abandon the acquisition?”
“Now? After he even did futures trading for the money?”
Gil Donggyu’s will to acquire was clear, so it made more sense to assume he had been forced out.
And Lee Jaseung already had a good idea who had done the forcing.
Seonkang Group eliminated the competitor. Without Gil Donggyu they can go for a sole acquisition.
Lee Jaseung reached a clean conclusion.
“Looks like Gil Donggyu is in a tight spot. Seonkang Group is interfering with the Hitex acquisition.”
“……Oh.”
Seo Minjae made a sympathetic sound.
A friend’s sorrow was usually Lee Jaseung’s joy, after all.
“So? What are you going to do?”
“I was thinking of helping him.”
“Really?”
“An older brother I know is having a hard time—of course I should help.”
The surprisingly normal answer caught Seo Minjae off guard.
Lee Jaseung would never do something like this. And against Seonkang Group of all people……
Seo Minjae tilted his head.
An acquisition war against Seonkang Group?
Somehow the scent felt familiar……
“Hey, don’t tell me—”
“Perfect timing, isn’t it? Makers was short on consulting track record. Investments prove themselves instantly with returns, but consulting takes time and the results are hard to compare…… and now Seonkang Group has stepped up again for me?”
The Hitex acquisition battle.
KG Group versus Seonkang Group.
But one side would receive Makers consulting, and the other would not.
“Is there any more perfect controlled experiment for proving my consulting than this?”
Seo Minjae was speechless.
“……What did Seonkang Group ever do to deserve getting tangled up with you twice?”
“Well, do you really need a crime just to run an experiment?”
※ This work is a work of fiction. All characters, groups, place names, and events appearing in the work are entirely fictional and have no connection to any real entities. Specialized knowledge described has also been restructured and adapted to fit the story and may differ from actual information.