The Battle for Control (1)
Heo Min-woong quickly called the other party.
"Hello."
"Hey! It’s your brother."
"Who are you calling ‘brother’?"
"What, you didn’t save your brother’s number? Keep this up and you’ll hurt my feelings."
Heo Min-woong kept casually pushing the fact that he was “the brother,” as if making the point over and over would somehow make it true. The other party seemed too tired to even correct him and simply let it slide.
"I know who this is."
"How have you been?"
"I’ve been fine. Nothing special."
"Nothing special? I’m looking at the news right now, and you’ve gone and caused a huge mess. You’re saying that isn’t special?"
"That depends on how you look at it."
"No, seriously, if something like this was going on, you should’ve told your brother first."
"Does this have anything to do with Heo Min-woong?"
"You’re asking because you don’t know? Anyone can see it’s connected."
There was a reason he said it that way.
Hanseong Group’s eldest daughter, Joo Hye-jin, was married to Hur Min-hong, the eldest son of Hwaan Group. So, in a roundabout way, this was his sister-in-law’s family business.
"Let’s meet and talk. Are you free now?"
"I’m a bit tied up at the moment. I’ll contact you later."
"Got it. Be sure to call."
After hanging up, Heo Min-woong thought about it.
Now that Han Miru had gotten involved, there was no way this situation would end neatly.
No, this was just the beginning.
After hearing about it from Han Miru, Chairman Yoo Jae-ho mobilized every connection he had in Saudi Arabia and across the Middle East to gather information on Prince Rashid.
Because Saudi Arabia was an absolute monarchy, royals sat in nearly every major post. And most of them were close to the king and the crown prince.
But there was one thing most outsiders didn’t know.
When an incompetent man sat at the top, the actual organization often ran under the second-in-command. The same was true whether it was a country or a company.
Plenty of ministers were nothing more than figureheads, while the real work was done by the bureaucrats underneath them.
"So most of them are Prince Rashid’s people?"
Chief Secretary Kim Ji-seok nodded.
"Yes. I was honestly shocked while investigating. He seems to have completely locked down the military side in particular."
When it came to seizing state power, there were two things that mattered most: money and the army.
If he had already secured the military after controlling the money supply, the kind of game he was playing was obvious.
Whether he would remain a power broker behind the scenes as he was now, or step into the spotlight later, was still unclear…
"So everyone else had no idea."
"More accurately, I’d say they knew and just didn’t pay it any attention."
Even with all that power, Prince Rashid had never drawn much attention to himself.
Even on his visit to Korea, he had never stepped forward directly or made a public statement. He had simply stood at the crown prince’s side.
There’s always a reason when someone powerful chooses to hide it.
Chairman Yoo Jae-ho smiled to himself.
Somehow, every time I do him a favor, it feels like I’m accumulating debt.
If it was that kind of debt, he was happy to take it.
He was thinking of calling Han Miru when articles about Continue Capital began appearing in real time.
He had heard plenty about the Hanjeong Group merger and the succession battle, but it hadn’t particularly interested him. Even among the top ten conglomerates, Yuseong Group operated on a completely different scale from Hanjeong Group.
But the moment he saw that Continue Capital was involved, his interest was piqued.
When Yoo Jae-ho read the article, he burst out laughing.
"Hahaha!"
How much time had passed since they’d blown up the Thomas Motors scandal and acquired Snow Crash, and now they were talking about devouring a chaebol group in Korea?
It was an utterly impossible line of action.
Yoo Jae-ho picked up his phone and made a call.
As soon as the call with Heo Min-woong ended, another call came in from elsewhere.
It was Chairman Yoo of Yuseong Group. There were quite a lot of people looking for me today.
"Hello, Chairman."
Yoo Jae-ho spoke in a voice tinged with amusement.
"I was wondering what you were up to, and it turns out you’re doing something rather interesting."
"Did you see the article?"
"Yes. I had no idea you were interested in Hanjeong Group as well. You weren’t buying shares to help those people, I take it. Are you planning to take their control away?"
"Well. That depends on how much they think my stake is worth."
"It’s not easy to swallow a chaebol group in Korea."
"To get noticed, don’t you have to pull off the things everyone else thinks are impossible?"
"True enough. By any chance, is there anything I can do to help?"
"I appreciate the thought. If I need help, I’ll ask."
It was a matter involving the control rights of one of the top ten conglomerates, and yet he didn’t seem particularly concerned.
That was only natural. Even if they were both counted among the top ten groups, Yuseong Group and Hanjeong Group differed in market capitalization by nearly twentyfold.
Hanjeong Group, in terms of size, wasn’t even as large as one of Yuseong Group’s affiliates.
"Oh, right. Did you tell Sung Yoon-ah in advance?"
"No. I didn’t."
"If she found out from the article, she might be upset, don’t you think?"
"…"
Was there really any need to be upset over something like that?
"You should call her now, just in case."
Taking the hint, I hung up and immediately called Sung Yoon-ah.
"Hello, Yoon-ah. You’re at work right now, I assume."
She replied in a blunt voice.
"I’m looking at the article right now. I’m guessing I was the only one who didn’t know."
"That’s not true. This was handled under absolute secrecy. I actually wanted to tell you much earlier, but I couldn’t help it."
"Really? Chairman Yoo Jae-ho didn’t know either?"
"Of course not. He just called me in complete shock."
My answer seemed to put her at ease, and her voice brightened a little.
"I suppose so. It wouldn’t have been good if it had leaked ahead of time."
"How’s the atmosphere over there?"
"It’s chaos. Hanjeong Mulsan is surging, HJ Logistics is crashing, and the other Hanjeong Group affiliates are all over the place."
In fact, cheers and groans were probably breaking out everywhere right now.
When you bought low and sold high in a situation like this, it was entirely possible to make fifty percent on a single trade.
Of course, the reverse was also true: buy at the top and sell at the bottom, and you could be staring at a fifty percent loss in one shot.
The Korean stock market really was dynamic like that.
"Why Hanjeong Group of all targets?"
The obvious answer was that it was profitable. There were other reasons, too, but still.
I answered with a joke.
"I just didn’t like the way Ju Hyeon-jin was acting that day."
"What do you mean?"
"And the way he kept making a nuisance of himself around you."
"Th-then don’t tell me this is because of me…"
I laughed.
"Of course I’m kidding—"
"I-I’ve got to get back to work."
Before I could even say that I was joking, she had already hung up.
I stared at my phone for a moment and thought about it.
She wasn’t getting the wrong idea, was she?
An emergency meeting at Hanjeong Group had been called.
Chairman Ju Min-jae, who had collapsed at the press conference hall, was immediately rushed to the emergency room. Fortunately, the doctor on site had managed to stabilize him right away, so they had avoided a dangerous crisis, but the diagnosis was that he would have to remain in a hospital bed for some time.
In the room where the executives had gathered, Vice Chairman Ju Cheol-jin barked out his anger.
"What the hell is going on here?!"
Executive Director Park Un-yong lowered his head.
"I’m sorry, Vice Chairman."
"When exactly did those bastards start buying?"
If they had bought after the merger proposal was announced, there was no way it could have gone unnoticed. Which meant they had finished accumulating shares before the dispute ever broke out.
In other words, from the very beginning, 9.2 percent of the market had simply not been there!
Everyone clicked their tongues inwardly.
So that’s why the trading volume was so low.
"How could nobody know until they’d bought 9.2 percent?"
"It looks like they used the same trick Elliott does, parking the shares through a proxy."
Under the law, any holding above 5 percent had to be disclosed immediately. The fact that the filing didn’t come out until they were at 9.2 percent meant they had used an evasion tactic.
Under normal circumstances, a stake like that would never be enough to shake control of a company. But now they were already in conflict with the coalition, and the failed merger had left them damaged.
In short, they had been ambushed at the moment they were weakest.
No, they chose the moment we were weakest and struck.
At this point, the merger itself was no longer the main issue.
If they weren’t careful, they could lose control altogether.
Though no one said it out loud, everyone in the room understood the seriousness of the situation.
If control of the company fell to a hedge fund, how many of them would actually be able to keep their seats?
Ju Cheol-jin forced down his agitation and issued orders.
"First, figure out the situation."
Park Un-yong bowed.
"Understood."
Kim Sung-gwun let out a dry laugh.
"I never thought you’d jump into this fight."
KSGI had also been monitoring the market.
They had noticed the drop in trading volume, but they hadn’t imagined that another player had been quietly buying shares before the dispute even began.
Which means they anticipated this situation from the very start.
That was something Hanjeong Group itself hadn’t even expected—that Elliott and KSGI would join forces to oppose the merger.
The only word for it was astonishing.
What on earth are you? You can’t just be an ordinary young man.
He usually judged people by first impressions, and more often than not, that had proved accurate.
A truly outstanding investor always carried a certain presence. But the first thing he had felt when he met Han Miru had been an odd, unplaceable sense of dissonance.
He couldn’t easily tell whether the man was genuinely talented or not.
That was why, if possible, he wanted to keep him close and watch him. His offer of a job had been sincere, not a joke.
So there was a reason he turned me down.
He never would have guessed that Miru was someone from Continue Capital.
Kim Sung-gwun made a call.
The other side answered immediately.
"Hello, Representative. I was waiting for your call."
Kim Sung-gwun skipped the unnecessary questions and went straight to the point.
"What’s your relationship with Continue Capital?"
"It’s where I work."
That was the answer he had expected.
"What’s the objective?"
"Exactly what you’re thinking."
"You’re trying to take over Hanjeong Mulsan?"
"Yes."
"That’s not a simple problem, you know. There’s never been a successful hostile M&A against a domestic chaebol group, and it’s expected to remain difficult in the future. Do you know why?"
"The National Pension Service, I’d imagine."
"Exactly."
The National Pension Service was effectively the largest shareholder in almost every major Korean corporation. And more often than not, it sided with the chaebols.
"But the situation is different right now, isn’t it?"
At present, the National Pension Service had its hands tied by allegations of improper lobbying.
If the pension fund couldn’t exercise its voting rights, control could be taken with as little as 45 percent.
The votes currently secured by the coalition came to about 19.1 percent. Add Continue Capital’s stake, and that rose to 28.3 percent.
And if we add in the retail shareholders and any defectors?
Originally, KSGI’s goal had been to block the merger and push the stock price as high as possible through active involvement. But then a situation no one had seen coming had suddenly arisen.
Hanjeong Mulsan was the holding company of Hanjeong Group.
With control of Hanjeong Mulsan alone, you could control the entire group.
Could it really be possible?
If a hostile M&A against one of South Korea’s top ten conglomerates succeeded, it would rewrite the history of private equity in the country.
It would have been unimaginable before.
But thanks to Continue Capital’s arrival, the situation had changed.
Kim Sung-gwun suppressed his excitement and spoke calmly.
"I’d like to meet and discuss the details."