Korean Branch (1)
The painting sold without a hitch, and in the end I’d secured 300 million dollars in capital.
I’d already worked out the method, so all that was left was to carry it out. I couldn’t possibly do everything myself, which meant I needed staff.
The important work would be handled by David Lockhart and the people at headquarters anyway, so in Korea I only needed a minimum crew.
I met Senior Dong-ho at an indoor pojangmacha across from Korea University.
“Over here!”
When I raised a hand, Senior Dong-ho came over and dropped heavily into the seat opposite me.
“How have you been?”
“I’m fine.”
“I heard you went to the U.S.”
“How’d you find out?”
“Sung Yoon-ah told me.”
“I see.”
“Are you close with Sung Yoon-ah?”
If you’d asked me that before, I would have said no. Lately, though, I did feel like we were fairly close.
“More or less.”
“Do you ever run into her and mention me?”
“Is there even anything to say about you?”
“If there isn’t, make something up. Talk about my outstanding work ethic or how devoted I am to my juniors. Make me sound good, will you?”
“Would that really do anything?”
“It can’t hurt to stay on the chairman’s granddaughter’s good side. I’d like to keep this company job for a very long time.”
He was as loyal to the company as ever.
While we talked, the drinks and side dishes arrived. We clinked glasses.
“So what brought you back from the States?”
“A little work, and I wanted to clear my head.”
Senior Dong-ho nodded.
“I was worried you’d gone somewhere and couldn’t even afford to eat, but you seem to be doing fine. Traveling is nice. You didn’t bring me a gift?”
“I did.”
“Oh! Really?”
I handed him the tube. Senior Dong-ho pulled out the painting inside and stared at it in disbelief.
“Why is it a picture?”
“I bought it at a street stall while I was traveling.”
“Come on, you could’ve at least brought back a key chain or a magnet.”
“You don’t like it?”
At my question, he gave a perfunctory nod.
“Well, it’s the thought that counts. Anyway, thanks.”
He didn’t seem to like it at all.
His opinion would change if he knew it was a Banksy and worth more than five hundred thousand dollars.
“Keep it safe, okay? It might sell for a high price later. Don’t lose it, and don’t give it away.”
“Got it. Not sure where I’d even hang it.”
He’d probably just shove it under his bed or something, but as long as he didn’t throw it out, that was fine.
“How are things at the company these days?”
“We wobbled a bit after the Primus scandal, but things are finally starting to settle down. Ah, right—you know we’re joining the Yuseong Securities consortium this time, don’t you?”
“Yes. They’re acquiring LNG infrastructure in Germany, right?”
“That fund closed in no time.”
“That’s a relief.”
Once the alcohol started flowing, Senior Dong-ho let out one sigh after another.
“What good does that do me? The stocks I dumped my salary into are crashing. Haaah... Why is my life like this?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you make a lot of money from now on.”
“How?”
I casually got to the point.
“Want to come work with me, Senior?”
“Do what?”
“Something that can make you a lot of money.”
Senior Dong-ho jumped slightly.
“You’re not trying to drag me into one of those pyramid schemes, are you? You want to pull me in too?”
“……”
It wasn’t unreasonable for him to think that way. A junior who’d left the company suddenly showed up and invited him to make a fortune; if I were him, I might have assumed the same thing.
“Pyramid schemes aren’t something just anyone can do. We’ve got to do the work we were made for.”
“And what’s that?”
“What else did we study except investing?”
“You want to invest?”
“Yes. I started a company with someone I know not too long ago.”
“What kind of company?”
“An investment firm.”
“An investment advisory? An asset manager?”
“Something like that.”
There were investment advisories and asset management firms everywhere in Korea.
Some of them actually created products, raised money, and managed it directly, but the reality was that a great many survived by charging each person one to two hundred thousand won a month and telling them when to buy and sell stocks in a paid chat room.
Of course, the successful VIP rooms reportedly charged millions of won, so it must have been fairly profitable.
“You want me to run a paid information room?”
“Come on, do you really think I’d drag you in here just to make you manage a chat room?”
“Then what?”
“I want us to invest properly.”
Senior Dong-ho looked genuinely puzzled.
“Where’s the money supposed to come from?”
“For now, we invest with the company’s capital. If we need more, we raise funds and bring in LPs.”
That was how private equity firms operated.
Even a PE fund moving trillions of won at a time didn’t necessarily have that many people. At most, teams of ten or twenty would handle the work.
If the investment succeeded and they managed a clean exit, it was possible for each person to pocket incentives worth billions of won.
Of course, I was talking about the giant PE firms founded by famous investors whose names everyone recognized.
“Think about it. World-class PEs like Redstone, Blue Pearl, and Bridge River all started with just a handful of people. MKK Partners, the biggest PE firm in Korea, was founded by Chairman Kang Myung-guk and a friend.”
Senior Dong-ho looked flustered.
“N-No, come on. He was already the head of the Kanaan Group before that. GIC came in as an anchor LP from the very beginning.”
GIC was Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund.
It ranked among the few biggest sovereign funds in the world. The moment you got investment from GIC, your starting line was already different.
“Either way, what’s impossible for us?”
“Why has your scale gotten so big?”
“Dreams should be big.”
Senior Dong-ho stared at me for a moment, then asked in a low voice, “Don’t tell me you really have someone backing you?”
“What do you mean?”
“No, there’ve been rumors that you took a bribe, exposed the company’s corruption, and then left.”
“Who would I even take a bribe from?”
“Vice Chairman Yang Ja-eun, maybe. Or no, that still doesn’t really make sense.”
Honestly, even the fact that I’d regressed didn’t make sense.
I laughed.
“Well, a few things happened.”
Senior Dong-ho sighed before asking, “So how much investment capital does the company have right now?”
“You’ll be surprised if I tell you.”
“I won’t be surprised, so just tell me. Don’t say it’s not even a hundred million won.”
“Excluding the money already invested, we’ve got roughly 300 million won in cash.”
Senior Dong-ho’s eyes went wide.
“Where the hell did you get 300 million won?”
“There’s always a way.”
At my answer, he seemed to be getting hot under the collar and started gulping down his beer.
“Even if you make thirty percent a year on 300 million, that’s only ninety million. That wouldn’t even cover the two of us. In the end, you’d have to run one of those paid chat rooms anyway.”
“Dollars.”
“Dollars?”
“Not 300 million won. 300 million dollars.”
“Huh? 300 million dollars...?”
“At today’s exchange rate, that’d be over 330 billion won. Isn’t that enough to do something with?”
Senior Dong-ho spewed the beer he’d been drinking back into his glass.
The moment we got up from the drinking table, I took Senior Dong-ho straight to the office in Gangnam.
When I flipped on the lights, the interior came into view. The desks and computers were already in place, so it actually looked like a real office.
“What do you think?”
“It’s not bad. But if I come work here, what title do I get?”
“How about head of the Korean branch?”
“Branch manager?”
Senior Dong-ho tilted his head.
“If this is a branch, then where’s the headquarters?”
“In the U.S. I set it up there on my last trip.”
“So it’s just a shell company, then?”
“What are you talking about? It’s a proper company. We have an office, a CEO, and staff.”
“Who’s the CEO?”
“Do you know David Lockhart?”
Senior Dong-ho repeated the name under his breath for a moment.
“He’s the CEO of Continue Capital.”
“That’s right.”
“What do you mean, that’s right?”
“I mean he’s the CEO of Continue Capital. Because this is the Korean branch of Continue Capital.”
“Huh?”
I explained slowly.
“I went to the U.S. and teamed up with David Lockhart to found Continue Capital.”
Senior Dong-ho still looked like he couldn’t quite process it.
“Wait a second. So the Continue Capital you’re talking about is the private equity firm that drove Thomas Motors into the ground and acquired Snow Crash?”
“Yes. That one.”
He still looked baffled.
“No, what are you even saying?”
I gave him a rough summary of everything that had happened so far. By now I was so used to telling the story that it came out smoothly enough.
After listening in a daze for a while, Senior Dong-ho finally spoke.
“When you put it like that, it sounds ridiculously easy... but you really pulled it off?”
“It wasn’t easy, actually.”
That’s how the world worked: when you only looked at the result, everything seemed simple. It was only when someone asked you to do the same thing that you realized you couldn’t.
“Fine. Let’s say you invested everything you earned and even acquired Snow Crash. Then where the hell did the 300 million dollars come from?”
“Half of it came from investors.”
“Who invested?”
“Someone from the Middle East.”
“He lives in Bucheon?”
“Why would Bucheon come up?”
Senior Dong-ho said it as if it were obvious.
“I mean Bucheon’s Jungdong, isn’t it?”
“Uh...”
Come to think of it, I could see why he’d think that.
“Not Bucheon. Saudi Arabia.”
At my answer, Senior Dong-ho wore a question mark on his face.
“Why is Saudi Arabia suddenly coming into this?”
“Because a Saudi prince invested.”
“A prince?”
“Yes. A real prince.”
Not just any prince, either. He was the future crown prince.
Senior Dong-ho looked flustered.
“You’re joking, right?”
“A few interesting things happened in the meantime.”
“No, what kind of interesting things happened that got you investment from a Saudi prince?”
“I’ll explain that later.”
He looked completely unconvinced.
I couldn’t really blame him, because I don’t think I would have believed it either.
“So what are you going to do with that investment money?”
“We invest it and grow it several times over, of course.”
“How?”
“You remember the Severin incident, right?”
“You mean when Severin Asset Management went after LK Group’s control?”
“And Carl Isaac?”
“The chairman of Isaac Enterprises? He’s famous as a corporate raider.”
I nodded.
“I’m planning to do something similar.”
“...Huh?”
“I’ll go into the details later.”
Senior Dong-ho clicked his tongue as he looked at me.
“I was worried you’d leave the company and end up barely scraping by, but in just a few months you’ve built Continue Capital and made that much money.”
“I got lucky.”
“Just how lucky do you have to get for that?”
“I’m a little surprised myself.”
“But if you’ve already made that much, do you really need to keep investing? Can’t you just sit back and live off it?”
“Since when did your dreams get so small?”
“And since when did yours get so huge?”
I put a hand on Senior Dong-ho’s shoulder.
“Let’s make a fortune together.”
“What about salary? Can you match what DA Securities pays?”
“I’ll give you a hundred million won for the first year.”
At that, his face lit up.
“Oh! A hundred million a year.”
“And I’ll raise it by double every year for ten years.”
“Double?”
For a moment he looked delighted, but soon after, he wore an expression of utter disbelief.
“Have you even calculated what that’d be in ten years?”
“It’d be 51.2 billion won.”
“Does that even make sense?”
“That’s why I said over ten years.”
Believe it or not.
Senior Dong-ho said, sounding increasingly confused, “Something about this feels off.”
“What does?”
“Aren’t you being too good to me? Why?”
“What do you think?”
“Because you’ve been keeping an eye on my investment skills? Or because you discovered some hidden talent of mine that I don’t even know about?”
“……”
He had to know even he didn’t believe what he was saying.