Preparing for the Shareholders' Meeting (2)
Then Lee Yeon-ji's ex-husband showed up at the company, demanding money and making a scene.
Because of that incident, some people argued that she should be transferred to another department, but Yoon Han-bin firmly opposed it, saying the victim should never be blamed.
He said that protecting employees was the company's duty and brought in the legal team to make sure the ex-husband was punished and never allowed near her again.
Through all of that, the two of them grew close at a startling pace.
Yoon Han-bin had lived his life keeping women at arm's length. He had always put success in his work ahead of romance, and before he met his wife, he had barely dated at all.
But once the fire caught, he couldn't put it out.
Even he found it strange that he still had this much passion at his age.
When he was with her, he felt like a real man. He had gone through life not even knowing what love was, and only now had he finally found true love.
But...
That was only his way of looking at it. To everyone else, it was nothing but an affair. Worse, it was an affair between a conglomerate CEO and his secretary.
He knew better than anyone what would happen if they were caught. For her sake, he had to stop here.
But he couldn't stop.
Since his days as a rookie employee, he had often seen men who sat in high places tumble after one wrong move below the belt.
Before, he had never understood it.
How could anyone destroy a career built over a lifetime for the sake of one woman?
But now that he was the one in that situation, he finally understood.
It wasn't as though those men had wanted to do it. Even when they didn't want to, they had no choice but to.
In any case, if the truth came out, it wouldn't end as a mere scandal.
How much does he know?
Watching him warily, Han Mi-ru said, “Don't worry. I only wanted to talk about business.”
“Business?”
“I heard you've been appointed chair for the shareholders' meeting.”
Just as I thought.
From the moment he had revealed his identity, he had suspected this was the reason.
“You want me to side with the three-way alliance at the shareholders' meeting?”
Han Mi-ru gave a dry laugh. “Ha!”
When the other man stared at him as if asking what was so funny, Mi-ru stopped smiling.
“Ah, sorry. But if I did ask that, could you actually do it?”
“……”
The chair of a shareholders' meeting only kept things moving; it wasn't a position where he could make his own judgment or decisions. Even if Mi-ru tried to win him over, there would be nothing to gain from it.
If it's not that...
“Are you after the Hanjeong Mulsan shares I hold?”
Han Mi-ru laughed again.
“According to the disclosure, you own 5,600 shares.”
At current prices, 5,600 shares were worth more than 1 billion won.
But that was only thanks to the recent stock-price spike. As a percentage, it was less than 0.01 percent of the total.
Every little bit helped, but it wasn't essential.
Then what is it? Is he asking me to leak some dirt on Hanjeong Mulsan or Vice Chairman Ju Cheol-jin?
“What exactly do you want?”
Without meaning to, his voice had turned sharp.
Han Mi-ru answered calmly. “I want only one thing. Fairness.”
“Fairness?”
“Yes. I want you to run it fairly, without leaning toward either side. That's all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. At a shareholders' meeting, the votes decide everything. The fair thing is to back the side that secures more votes.”
There was nothing to say. It was so obvious that he had no argument against it.
Even if Mi-ru had come all this way to say it, it was exactly how he would have handled things anyway.
A shareholders' meeting was an event where the shareholders gathered to vote on a proposal. If he ignored the result and went ahead however he pleased, it wouldn't end with a few insults; he would be facing criminal charges.
“You really want that?”
“Yes.”
Han Mi-ru looked him straight in the eye. “When the moment comes to decide, just think about one thing: which side has secured more votes. Then nothing will happen to either of you.”
By “either of you,” he meant Yoon Han-bin and Secretary Lee Yeon-ji.
“I don't understand why you're saying this.”
“When the time comes, you'll understand what I meant. If you don't, then just forget everything we talked about today. Can you promise me that?”
He still couldn't see the reason for it.
But it was a perfectly reasonable request, so there was no reason to refuse.
“I promise.”
“Thank you.”
Yoon Han-bin hesitated, then spoke carefully. “As for Secretary Lee Yeon-ji...”
Han Mi-ru looked at him as if he had no idea what he was talking about. “Who?”
Yoon Han-bin was about to say something, then shook his head.
“No, nothing.”
“Sorry to disturb you while you were resting. Then I'll see you on the day of the meeting.”
Just as Han Mi-ru was about to rise after the polite farewell, he seemed to remember something and said, “Ah! May I give you one piece of advice?”
“What is it?”
“You'd better make up your mind soon. A woman's instincts are frightening.”
He spoke as if he knew everything.
Until now, he had never been able to speak openly about this problem to anyone. And yet, for some reason, he felt that this young man might actually know the answer.
Before he could stop himself, he asked, “What do you think I should do?”
Han Mi-ru thought for a moment before giving his answer.
“If the three-way alliance wins, they'll remove you from the CEO position and reassign you to one of the European branches. Maybe you could start a new life there.”
Yoon Han-bin, the CEO of Hanjeong Mulsan.
Even if I'd worked as an analyst, I couldn't have memorized every executive out there. But I remembered him clearly.
The reason was the exposure of his affair with his secretary.
After learning the truth, his wife had stormed into the company, raising hell and threatening to find the other woman and kill her.
It was a huge incident, big enough to make the news.
Yoon Han-bin resigned as CEO and stepped down because of it. Still, the fact that he divorced his wife and married his affair partner afterward suggested he really had loved her.
Online, opinions were split between He's a true romantic and He's trash for abandoning the wife who stood by him all those years.
Well, as always, it's romance when I do it and an affair when someone else does.
When I got home after meeting Director Yoon, Seonwu was stretched out on the living-room sofa, watching the news.
And, as expected, the broadcast was all about Hanjeong Mulsan's shareholders' meeting.
“It's been nothing but that story lately. Maybe I should've bought some Hanjeong Mulsan stock too.”
“Did you have the money to buy it?”
“Not really.”
That was because he had poured in everything he'd saved, even taking out loans to invest it all in me. Every paycheck he earned now went straight into paying down his overdraft.
“Then why is the government so dead set against the management rights changing hands?”
In truth, it didn't matter who held control—the company would still be a Korean firm. Just like A-Oil, which stayed near the top of the Korean business rankings even after Aramco acquired it.
But...
“From the government's point of view, it's easier to control a chaebol when the family still holds the reins. It's handy to drag them into hearings now and then and yell at them to invest and hire more people.”
Of course, the biggest reason was that they had been paid off.
“So, do you think we'll win?”
“I still don't know.”
This was happening regardless of the future I knew. I was the one who wanted to know how it would turn out.
I packed a bag in a hurry.
Seeing that, Seonwu asked, “Where are you going?”
“I'm taking a little vacation.”
“The shareholders' meeting is just around the corner.”
“Exactly why I want to clear my head before it starts.”
Before leaving for vacation, I called Sung Yoon-ah.
“Ah! Mi-ru. What's wrong?”
“There's one thing I'd like you to look into for me...”
An extraordinary shareholders' meeting was held at Hanjeong Mulsan's headquarters in Sogong-dong.
The management-rights dispute that had dragged on since the end of last year would be decided at this meeting. Because it was such a major event, journalists from both local and foreign outlets had swarmed the building.
The meeting itself was held behind closed doors in accordance with the wishes of the majority of shareholders. They were filming to preserve evidence, but nothing would be released to the press.
The reporters gathered in small clusters and chatted among themselves.
“Reporter Park, what do you think will happen today?”
“If you ask me, the owner family wins, doesn't it?”
“Seems like it. They apparently pulled together more than 40 percent, proxies included.”
“Word is they even emptied the slush fund to buy shares this time.”
“Then even if they win, won't they still take a loss in the hundreds of billions?”
“Still better than losing control of the company.”
“They should've managed it properly from the start.”
“And if they hadn't committed crimes, none of this would've happened in the first place.”
Strictly speaking, the three-way alliance had never said they would kick the owner family out of management.
All they wanted was to amend the articles of incorporation so that anyone convicted and sentenced to prison could not serve as an inside or outside director.
That would catch Chairman Ju Min-jae and Vice Chairman Ju Cheol-jin squarely in the crossfire.
Most of the reporters predicted the owner family would win.
Just as the reporters were chatting, Vice Chairman Ju Cheol-jin and Kim Sung-gwun appeared, and the journalists rushed forward with their microphones.
Vice Chairman Ju Cheol-jin said briefly, “I ask for the shareholders' wise judgment. I will use this as an opportunity to devote myself even more diligently to management.”
Kim Sung-gwun said the same thing in his own way.
“I have only one thing to say. The owners of a stock company are not the founding family, but the shareholders who own the stock.”
I met Kim Sung-gwun just before the shareholders' meeting began.
He looked exhausted, as if he hadn't slept properly. The skin around his eyes had sunk in, but his gaze still shone with sharp energy.
“How do you think it will go?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“I still can't say. Whoever wins, it'll be by a very narrow margin.”
There would be no second chance if we lost this meeting. The National Pension Service would side with them next time.
Kim Sung-gwun gave a bitter smile. “I've been through several hostile M&As before, but I've never been this tense.”
That was only natural. The amount he had staked on this game was in the trillions of won.
And so was mine. If we won the meeting, we had a contract in place to transfer 9.2 percent of Hanjeong Mulsan for 2.5 trillion won.
And if we lost?
Then we'd have no choice but to sell on the open market.
We wouldn't take the kind of enormous loss we'd have suffered if we'd bought at the intentionally suppressed price, but it wouldn't be easy to make a big profit either.
Maybe we could still make 500 billion won.
In other words, depending on whether it passed or failed, 2 trillion won was on the line.
So we had to win.
I stepped into the meeting hall.
Dong-ho and Kim Beom-seok were already inside, and Seonwu had taken a day off to come because he was curious.
“Oh! This is my first time at a shareholders' meeting.”
“Not many people ever come in person, even if they buy stock.”
A little later, Sara arrived.
“I'm looking forward to seeing what result comes out today.”
Today's events would probably be reported directly to Prince Rashid.
There were so many attendance passes that it took three hours just to verify the proxies on both sides.
Ju Cheol-jin and Ju Hye-jin were present at the meeting, but Ju Hyeon-jin was nowhere to be seen.
I could see the expression on Ju Cheol-jin's face harden in the front row.
The hall was packed. People filled not only the seats but the stairways as well.
Yoon Han-bin, serving as chair of the shareholders' meeting, said, “I hereby open the extraordinary shareholders' meeting of Hanjeong Mulsan.”
With that declaration, the meeting finally got underway.