The 400% Legend
Yoo Jae-won gestured toward Vincent Greenhill from his seat. “Mr. Greenhill, please begin.”
Vincent Greenhill, who had been waiting, offered a respectful Korean-style bow before activating his laser pointer and microphone. “Chairman Yoo Jae-won and members of the executive team, good afternoon. I am Vincent Greenhill, President of ID Investment.”
The opening was courteous and measured, yet the data projected on the screen hit like a nuclear blast.
“At the beginning of last year, ID Investment’s portfolio was centered on the IT sector. Thanks to the Chairman’s foresight, we liquidated most of our IT holdings and redirected capital into SPA companies such as Zara and Uniqlo. At the same time, we increased our positions in proven large-cap IT firms like Cisco, IBM, and Intel.”
Vincent spoke calmly, but the achievement was extraordinary. Countless Wall Street firms had collapsed precisely because they failed to anticipate the IT bubble burst that shattered 1998 economic indicators. ID Investment had sidestepped the catastrophe entirely.
“As a result, the Yoo Jae-won Fund has achieved an average return of 43.4 percent—a new legend.”
Choi Kang-wook managed the $10 billion White Tiger Fund from Korea, but the fund products ID Investment offered to general investors in both Korea and the United States carried no special name. They were simply known as ID Investment funds. When the marketing department requested a proper name last year, senior leadership decided to attach Yoo Jae-won’s own name. It was an unconventional choice. Wall Street funds typically favored dramatic titles—Quantum, Phantom, Tiger. By using the owner’s name, ID Investment signaled that Yoo Jae-won personally stood behind the fund’s performance. While the contracts contained no formal return guarantee, the association itself conveyed stability. If returns turned disastrous, the damage to Yoo Jae-won’s reputation would be immense. Investors also took comfort in knowing the world’s most celebrated genius was directly involved in the investment strategy.
ID Investment had lived up to every expectation. It had perfectly avoided the IT bubble collapse and discovered new investment opportunities that generated profits even amid global turmoil.
“ID Investment then predicted that the Asian financial crisis would ultimately strike Japan and placed a $10 billion bet on that outcome—essentially the Chairman’s personal funds.”
Vincent allowed himself a small joke. It was not inaccurate. The firm had committed so heavily to Japan’s economic collapse that losing the entire $10 billion would have been acceptable.
When the next slide revealed the actual returns, the atmosphere in the room became electric.
“The result was an unprecedented 400 percent return.”
The precise figure appeared on screen. Although the presentation could have ended there, Vincent continued, now addressing the deployment of the astronomical profits.
The fact that Yoo Jae-won had personally contributed $10 billion to the IMF to rescue Korea from default was already legendary in the United States. While some criticism had surfaced, most observers ultimately praised him for prioritizing national welfare. The executive team also knew he had used another $10 billion to establish the White Tiger Fund and acquire Korean assets at distressed prices. In total, $20 billion of the profits had been reinvested in Korea. The country’s economic situation had improved markedly as a result. Although 1998 marked the first year of the IMF regime and brutal restructuring swept the nation, regions touched by Yoo Jae-won’s capital felt almost none of the crisis.
“We plan to officially launch a microcredit business in Korea with $1 billion in capital in the near future,” Vincent announced.
In reality, the launch had been postponed. The reason was the presidential election. The campaign of the likely winner had politely requested that the project be delayed so the new administration could claim credit for it upon taking office. A small-loan program for ordinary citizens offered immediate, tangible benefits to the public. The request itself revealed how dramatically the political landscape had shifted. Had Jeon Myeong-heon still been alive, no one would have dared issue such instructions to Yoo Jae-won. Yet the president-elect’s team was already behaving this way even before the final results were confirmed.
The Democratic Party representative had been extremely courteous—almost deferential—when speaking with Choi Kang-wook. Still, the underlying message was unmistakable. Yoo Jae-won had wanted to refuse outright and proceed on his own terms, but antagonizing the incoming administration carried its own risks. He had therefore agreed. Given Kim Dae-jung’s commanding lead in the polls, his victory was all but certain. However, Yoo Jae-won had already decided that any future attempt to treat him as a pushover would be met with a clear demonstration of his influence.
As part of that strategy, he had emptied one of the safes Jeon Myeong-heon had left behind and sent its contents to Kim Dae-jung’s campaign headquarters. It was not the Piggy Bank Safe containing 60 billion won, but the more modern LK Bank safe holding just under 50 billion won. During the previous election, Yoo Jae-won had earned a partnership-like status by actively campaigning alongside Jeon Myeong-heon. This time, however, he had remained a distant observer. Without meaningful support, his voice would carry little weight after the inauguration. Hence the decision to provide campaign funds.
This approach was not his preferred style, but he had begun adapting his methods to honor Jeon Myeong-heon’s final wishes. He had also made it clear that not a single won would go to the opposition candidate. In this election, the opposition had no realistic path to victory.
“A portion of the profits has also been used to increase our capital stake in Shin-Nihon Investment Bank, our Japanese subsidiary, thereby expanding our investment exposure to Japan. With this fresh capital, Shin-Nihon Investment Bank has begun an aggressive expansion.”
Vincent displayed the relevant materials on screen. Yoo Jae-won’s directive to the bank had been straightforward: acquire every high-quality Japanese asset available. The Nikkei’s catastrophic plunge and the yen’s violent surge had left Japan in a state eerily similar to Korea just before the IMF crisis. Although Japan possessed substantial foreign reserves and household savings that prevented a full IMF intervention, corporate bankruptcies were occurring at an alarming rate. The unwinding of yen carry trades had triggered inflation as yen funds flowed back into the country. Amid the wreckage, Shin-Nihon Investment Bank had systematically acquired every promising Japanese company.
Yoo Jae-won’s revelations had exposed the so-called Japanese craftsmanship as largely built on quality manipulation and fraud, damaging the entire “Made in Japan” brand. Kobe Steel, the scandal’s origin, had collapsed, and the Kobe Shipyard had lost its LNG carrier contracts. Yet Japan still possessed numerous companies with genuine world-class technology, and Shin-Nihon Investment Bank had swept them up.
“Twenty-two companies in total, acquired for $6.3 billion.”
The scale of capital deployed was staggering, and the quality of the acquisitions was equally impressive. A clear pattern emerged: the list was heavily weighted toward heavy industry. Given that the crisis had originated with Kobe Steel, Japanese heavy industry had suffered the most severe damage, making acquisitions relatively straightforward. High-tech sectors had not been ignored, however. Kawasaki Heavy Industries, listed in the middle of the roster, produced industrial robots despite its traditional name. The final entry belonged to an entirely different field.
“How were we able to acquire Shueisha?” someone asked.
The company—known in Korean as Jipyeongsa—was the last name on Shin-Nihon Investment Bank’s shopping list. Shueisha was one of Japan’s largest publishers, specializing in manga and entertainment magazines, and ranked among the top five in the domestic market. Its flagship weekly, Jump, was world-famous.
“We combined aggressive M&A tactics with exploitation of a vulnerability within the owner family,” Vincent explained.
Shueisha was not an independent entity but part of the Hitotsubashi Group, where it served as a flagship business alongside Shogakukan. The group itself was privately held, making it an extremely difficult target. During Japan’s economic freefall, however, companies had begun liquidating assets to raise emergency funds. Among those assets was equity in the Hitotsubashi Group. The eldest son of the founding family had suffered catastrophic losses in futures and FX trading. To cover the shortfall, he had pledged his inherited shares as collateral for a loan—from a bank that had recently come under Shin-Nihon Investment Bank’s control. The rest of the story was predictable.
Vincent did not elaborate on the unsavory details in the meeting, and Yoo Jae-won had no desire to hear them.
“For the time being, the Hitotsubashi Group will continue managing Shueisha’s operations. No one understands publishing better than they do.”
Vincent had also judged it unwise to further inflame Japanese public opinion by immediately announcing ID Group’s ownership. Yoo Jae-won raised no objection. His mind was already racing with ways to leverage Shueisha’s vast content library. Dragon Ball alone enjoyed enormous popularity in the West. Simply adding Japanese animation to Timeflix would effortlessly draw in children worldwide. First, however, a fundamental problem had to be solved: the current television anime productions were of abysmal quality. Budget constraints had resulted in stiff animation and endless recycling of the same footage. Some episodes consisted of little more than Goku firing a single energy blast. Content that took only a few manga pages was stretched across an entire episode. Once ID Group established a proper content production pipeline, Yoo Jae-won was determined to remake Japanese animation with Hollywood-level budgets—while strictly prohibiting any live-action adaptations. Turning Japanese manga into successful films had proven notoriously difficult.
“Thank you for your hard work.”
The presentation had been extraordinarily impactful—massive returns paired with visionary future investments. The room erupted in sustained applause for Vincent Greenhill. Because the presentation had been concise, the meeting moved swiftly to the next item.
“Next, we have Kevin Johnson, President of Android Corporation,” Kim Dae-seok announced.
Kevin Johnson rose from his seat three places to Yoo Jae-won’s right, his tension plainly visible. Although he had long been treated as family and Yoo Jae-won had never shown favoritism, Kevin still could not shake the lingering label of being an ex-Microsoft executive. Consequently, he had prepared his slides with exceptional care. The design was perfectly unified, and every slide conveyed its information with striking clarity.
Android Gaming Edition: 26.85 million copies
Android Workstation Edition: 3.12 million copies
Android Enterprise Edition: 6.48 million copies
Android Rental Licenses: 1.24 million copies
Total sales: 37.69 million copies.
It was an extraordinary achievement. Yet when Kevin Johnson took the podium, his tone was unexpectedly cautious.
“The 1998 PC market was in a slump. Household upgrades to high-performance PCs had largely been completed, and with major components such as CPUs and graphics cards on the verge of new technological breakthroughs, many consumers chose to delay purchases.”
While technically accurate, the statement was overly modest. Shipments from major manufacturers like Dell and HP had indeed declined slightly, but steady baseline demand remained. The B2B sector had experienced explosive growth exceeding 50 percent year-over-year, driven by surging server demand from internet expansion. Furthermore, Android had written new history by dramatically increasing legitimate software sales in Asia—particularly China, a region long plagued by copyright infringement. Beyond the operating system itself, Android’s professional software suite—including video editing tools, photographic editors, and development environments supporting multiple programming languages—had also posted robust sales. As a publicly listed company, these results translated directly into share price performance. At Kevin Johnson’s gesture, the next slide appeared, displaying detailed stock-related data.