Midas Touch
Heo Min-woong bent at the waist with sudden politeness, as if all his arrogance had been packed away somewhere out of sight, and held out a hand to my father.
"Hello. I'm Heo Min-woong."
My father hurriedly bowed back and took the hand with visible care.
"Yes, hello. But why on earth would the vice president be here...?"
"Haha! I'm close with Miru. In some ways, I'd say we're even closer than real brothers."
That wasn’t exactly a lie.
I wasn’t sure how close he really was to me, but there was no doubt he was on bad terms with his own brothers.
"Please take good care of me from now on."
"N-no, the pleasure is mine, Vice President."
"Oh, come on. You can speak casually. Just call me Min-woong."
"Ah, yes. Min-woong-ssi."
He couldn’t quite bring himself to say "Min-woongie," so he added an honorific instead.
My father lowered his voice and asked me again.
"How on earth did you get to know someone like him?"
"I just ended up meeting him through work."
Honestly, I’d thought that one meeting would be the end of it too. I hadn’t expected we’d keep running into each other like this.
Heo Min-woong was openly friendly with my father.
"I was wondering who Miru took after to be so sharp, and it looks like he got a lot from you, sir."
"Ah, yes."
"By any chance, could I ask for your birthday?"
"Why do you ask...?"
"Ah! I was just thinking I might send you a gift when the time comes."
"......"
Why was he even checking the birthday of a father I barely remembered to celebrate myself?
Since the iron was hot, I went ahead and called in Park Yong-jin, the former executive director, right then and there.
He came rushing from Incheon, and I introduced him to my father.
"He had been working as an executive director at Hwaan Solutions until recently. I thought he’d be a huge help to the company, so I brought him here."
"W-what?"
"From today on, he’ll be serving as vice president of Byongjin Industrial."
My father couldn’t hide his shock.
"N-no. Why would someone like this come to work for us...?"
Park Yong-jin, formerly an executive director and now the vice president of Byongjin Industrial, bowed deeply and spoke with all due respect.
"Please take good care of me, President."
"Ah, yes. The pleasure is mine."
"If you’ll trust me, I’ll help you turn Byongjin Industrial into a global first-class company at the very heart of the wind power supply chain."
"......"
My father looked like he had no idea what he was hearing.
After a moment, he let out a groan-like question.
"...Pardon?"
***
After the Lunar New Year holiday ended, Lee Dong-ho came into Continue Capital’s Korean branch and sipped on a cup of instant mix coffee.
"Miru isn't here, and neither is the princess. It’s quiet, at least."
Even after the shareholders’ meeting, Han Miru had been running around everywhere and hardly showed up at the office.
Dong-ho drank his coffee, checked the closed U.S. and European markets out of old habit from his securities-firm days, then went through the reports that had come in overnight.
The difference from back then was that now, even when he watched stocks go up and down, he felt almost nothing.
By then, Kim Beom-seok had arrived too.
"Isn’t the team leader coming in today?"
Han Miru was technically a co-CEO at the headquarters, but almost no one in Korea knew that. So they’d given him the title of team leader to keep things simple.
And in the meantime, Kim Beom-seok had been promoted to branch vice president.
At this point, it almost felt as though titles were being handed out in order of hire date.
"He's meeting Heo Min-woong, the vice president of Hwaan Energy."
"About what?"
"Just family business, apparently."
"......"
What kind of family business involved meeting the son of the Hwaan Group chairman?
Kim Beom-seok suddenly looked as if he’d remembered something.
"Oh, right. Thanks."
"For what?"
"For getting me a job here."
"......Out of nowhere?"
Kim Beom-seok explained himself.
"At Seollal, my whole extended family gathered at my uncle’s place. Everyone was bragging about working for conglomerates and how much they made, then they asked me if I’d found a job."
"Oh? And?"
"I told them I’d gotten a job at a private equity fund. They started lecturing me, saying it wasn't even a big securities firm, so what was I doing in a place like that. So I said it was Continue Capital instead. They all went quiet in an instant."
Dong-ho nodded, as if that made perfect sense.
"Yeah, this place has gotten pretty famous."
Continue Capital had first become known to the public during the Thomas Motors affair.
But even then, it wasn’t especially famous in Korea. Now, though, it had become the most famous private equity fund in the country.
Since they had gone after a chaebol group with a hostile M&A, the public image was naturally negative... but notoriety counted as fame too, didn’t it?
"I still get nervous just thinking about the shareholders’ meeting. I really didn’t think we’d win."
"Neither did I."
The moment the vote was announced, it had been all but over.
And then they turned it around with a single proxy form.
Since the chair was the CEO of Hanjeong Mulsan, I’d expected them to stall by rechecking the proxy forms. Instead, they approved it immediately.
Hanjeong’s side did object afterward, but because there was nothing wrong with the proxy form, the shareholders’ meeting result wasn’t overturned.
The two of them knew the full story by now, but the press was still only speculating about why the chair had decided so quickly, and why Ju Hyeon-jin had signed the proxy in the first place.
Whatever the process, the result always made it look easy.
But behind that result lay countless steps. Han Miru had predicted all of them and prepared in advance.
At this point, Hanjeong Group’s chances of winning could safely be said to be almost nonexistent.
Dong-ho thought back to that day.
His whole body was still tingling.
Was this what it felt like to win a gamble with an enormous amount of money on the line, or to take first place in a major competition?
Investing wasn’t just about making money.
It was the act of confirming that you had won, that you had succeeded, that you had been right.
If he had stayed at DA Securities as an analyst, he would have ended up doing nothing more than writing articles and reports.
But this time, he had helped make things happen with his own hands.
He wasn’t just watching the world change. He was causing the change himself.
Is this what investing is all about?
With this investment, Continue Capital had made more than 2 trillion won in profit.
It had rewritten the history of private equity in one stroke.
"It’s not like he’s some god of investing, so how does he have skills like that?"
"Hmm. Maybe because I taught him so well?"
Kim Beom-seok stared at his friend with a look of complete disbelief.
Then Dong-ho protested, sounding genuinely wronged.
"I’m serious. I taught him everything he knows about trading and analyzing stocks."
After all, he had been Miru’s senior at university and his mentor at work.
Back then, he’d never imagined Miru had this kind of talent. Then, at some point, the man seemed to change completely.
But there was still one question that refused to go away.
"Why did he put me in charge of the branch?"
"Exactly. He doesn’t seem like the type to hand out a position just because he’s close to someone."
"Maybe it’s because of my own hidden investment genius that even I don’t know about?"
"Don’t talk nonsense."
"......"
Even saying it himself, it sounded ridiculous.
Dong-ho thought about it for a long time, but no convincing reason came to mind.
"Maybe I saved a nation in a past life?"
He hadn’t saved a nation, but he had saved someone.
***
After finishing the family business, I met Sara at a café.
The people inside kept sneaking glances at her, men and women alike. She didn’t seem bothered at all, which told me she was probably used to being stared at wherever she went.
We sat across from each other with our coffees.
"Isn’t this supposed to be your working hours?"
At my question, Sara smiled.
"I’ve decided to leave A-Oil."
"Then where to?"
"I’m moving over to PIF."
"I see."
It was about what I’d expected, so I wasn’t particularly surprised.
PIF was Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
In any case, being CFO at A-Oil had probably just been a place to build experience, and she’d be able to put her real ability to use at the sovereign fund.
Still, the timing of the move seemed much faster than before.
"I reviewed the proposal you mentioned last time."
"And?"
"A-Oil has started considering the acquisition of HJ Pure Cell."
"I see."
Honestly, that wasn’t a particularly important issue. Even if HJ Pure Cell got acquired, no money would be falling into my lap.
"What about the purchase of Nextrogen’s shares?"
"The sovereign fund is planning to invest."
"Oh! Good."
If 8 billion dollars came in, the money problem I had to pay Alex Preston would be solved in one shot.
That would buy me some breathing room.
"There’s one condition, though."
"What is it?"
"I’d like you to serve as PIF’s investment adviser."
"Hmm."
That was an unexpected proposal.
"What exactly would that involve?"
"Just reviewing reports on investment targets and giving advice. If you spot a good opportunity, you’d recommend it too."
"And the terms?"
"It isn’t really my decision, but the salary would be at least $10 million, with a separate performance bonus."
Ten million dollars just to read reports and say a few words.
If it were someone else, they’d probably have thrown both hands in the air and cheered.
I laughed inwardly.
They really were thinking hard.
Knowing only which industries would take off in the future made it easy to make money.
It was a little awkward to say it myself, but one word from me was worth not $10 million, but more like $10 billion and beyond.
I had no intention of selling my ability for such a cheap price.
"May I refuse?"
"Why?"
Sara quietly studied my face.
Even if she acted calm on the outside, she must have been burning inside.
She had already confirmed my ability. Of course she’d want to pull me into the sovereign fund’s investments no matter what.
"Simple advisory work doesn't suit my temperament."
"Then what do you want?"
"I should get my share in proportion to the profit I make."
"You mean you want a percentage of the returns? But that only applies when you exit."
"Right."
If you didn’t exit, the profit wasn’t realized, and you couldn’t distribute returns on unrealized gains.
A typical private equity fund bought a company, then sold it later and distributed the proceeds to investors. So eventually, an exit was inevitable.
But sovereign wealth funds didn’t have to do that, because they operated with state money instead of investor capital. That was why they often held onto good companies for the long term.
"Then how about this?"
"How?"
"Let’s have the sovereign fund and Continue Capital invest jointly and create a fund together."
This was a common structure whenever several investment firms co-invested.
If they divided the fund by contribution, the profit-sharing issue would be easy to solve.
"What ratio?"
"Fifty-fifty."
Sara asked with a trace of confusion.
"You want Continue Capital to contribute 50 percent of the fund capital? Do you actually have that kind of liquidity?"
Of course we didn’t.
If I had that kind of money, I’d have been out shopping for companies already.
"We’re a little tight on cash at the moment. How about lending it from PIF?"
"Lend it?"
"Yes. If PIF lends us the investment capital, we’ll put the full amount straight into the fund."
"......"
Sara looked like she’d lost the ability to speak.
And for good reason. What I was really saying was that I wanted to take a 50 percent stake in the fund without putting in a single won of my own.
"So in effect, PIF would be investing the full amount."
"I’ll pay enough interest to make that worthwhile. How does 10 percent annually sound? Compounded."
The ten-year government bond yield in developed countries was under 3 percent.
If they lent out half the capital at 10 percent, they’d be starting out with the equivalent of 5 percent of the total investment amount in returns.
"That only works if there aren’t any losses, though. If something goes wrong at Continue Capital and you lose the ability to pay, then we’d be the ones left holding the bag."
"Then we’ll have to operate well enough that that doesn’t happen."
"So I guess other funds just operate sloppily and end up taking losses."
No matter how good your investing was, there were countless cases where unpredictable market changes caused losses.
Not even Aaron Baker, the best investor alive and the man known as the Sage of Watkinsville, was exempt from that.
That was why risk management mattered.
But when you knew the future, the story changed.
"I exposed the Primus Fund collapse, assessed the value of Dongwoo Precision and got it acquired by Yuseong Electronics. I exposed the fraud at Thomas Motors and helped bring down the stock. I uncovered Rolf Buchi's lies and succeeded in acquiring Snow Crash. And this time, we even won the Hanjeong Mulsan control battle that everyone said was impossible."