Escape (3)
Depending on the scale, building a semiconductor fab cost trillions of won. Once you factored in the operating expenses over the years ahead, the total easily climbed into the tens of trillions, which was why choosing the right location mattered so much.
Texas looked fine at first glance, but a few years down the line, snowstorms and low temperatures would drive electricity demand through the roof. To avoid blackouts, the semiconductor plants were shut down every winter, and each time that happened, Yuseong Electronics took a brutal hit.
So Texas had to be avoided.
As for why I had recommended Georgia instead, you might have been curious—but if I just told you, where would the fun be in that?
He could probably work that much out on his own.
The story returned to the data center industry.
Chairman Yoo Jae-ho said, “If we announce our entry into the data center business, Yuseong Electronics’ stock will drop sharply.”
“How much are you expecting?”
“At the low end, fifteen percent. At the high end, thirty.”
For a company as massive as Yuseong Electronics, a thirty-percent drop was almost unheard of. And the lower the stock fell, the fiercer the backlash from shareholders would become.
“That’ll be the cheapest Yuseong Electronics will ever be. Why don’t you use this chance to put your own money in and buy directly?”
No one knew a company better than the person running it. If the CEO bought shares with his own money, the market would read it as a bullish signal.
“As for my own money, I don’t exactly have much in cash.”
Excluding any slush funds, that probably wasn’t far from the truth.
“Take out a loan if you have to and buy. We’ll support you as well. Through the Rush Fund, we’ll buy at least two percent ourselves. If we also buy separately through PIF, we should be able to get above five percent.”
Five percent didn’t sound like much, but even that amounted to three trillion won.
That was only because Yuseong Electronics was so huge.
“If you make it clear that you’re doing everything you can to lift Yuseong Electronics’ stock, all the shareholders will eventually stand behind you.”
Chairman Yoo Jae-ho smiled.
“It is a simple task, and yet a difficult one.”
After Chairman Yoo Jae-ho left, I spoke with David privately.
“You know about Chairman Samara’s arrest, right?”
He nodded.
“Of course. It was quite a shocking incident.”
Chairman Samara had gone to Japan to push ahead with the merger between SPME and Kionos, only to be arrested the moment he stepped off the plane at the airport.
David explained, “Even the French government and SPME only learned about the arrest through the press. That was possible because there had been plea bargains with whistleblowers.”
The Tokyo prosecutors had been collecting evidence of misconduct with help from former Executive Vice President Saito for nearly a year, then moved at once with an arrest warrant and launched a surprise operation.
“Right after his arrest, Chairman Samara gave interviews and strongly insisted he was innocent. It didn’t help.”
And then three months passed.
After several bail applications, Chairman Samara was finally released on one billion yen bail. The conditions included house arrest, security cameras installed in his home, restrictions on visits, and a ban on fleeing overseas.
“What happened after that?”
Did Chairman Samara go to trial and end up in prison? Or was he set free for good?
Surprisingly, neither happened.
“Even now, no trial has been held. The Japanese prosecutors are just keeping him locked up, claiming things like ‘additional charges have surfaced’ and ‘further investigation is necessary.’”
“Why?”
“For one thing, the French government is watching with its eyes wide open. And if they actually went to trial, they’d have to investigate Kionos and punish everyone involved. If they mishandled it, the company could stagger, and public opinion might turn against them.”
Saito had been Chairman Samara’s closest aide.
Whether he had actively joined in the misconduct or merely looked the other way, there was no way he could avoid criticism.
“The biggest problem is that even if every crime the Japanese prosecutors allege turns out to be true, you still have to ask whether it really warranted an emergency arrest and detention. Take embezzlement alone—if you add up every amount the prosecutors claim, it comes to only nine hundred million yen.”
“True enough. Compared with the LK Group chairman in Korea, who stole more than one hundred billion won, it’s almost laughably small.”
Unlike stingy Japan, Korea was bold enough not even to bother calling that kind of money embezzlement.
“There’s been heavy international criticism over this as well.”
It was hard to believe that in the twenty-first century, a developed country could keep someone locked up without ever holding a trial—but if it was Japan, apparently it was possible.
“The Japanese prosecutors’ behavior is infamous. There’s even a word for it: enzai.”
In any case, all of that was common knowledge.
What mattered was what happened next.
I thought back to the first timeline.
A few days after Christmas the following year, Chairman Samara held a press conference, and the whole world was thrown into shock. The reason was simple: the man everyone believed was still trapped in Japan had appeared in Jordan.
It turned out that, as if executing a special operation, he had secretly escaped Japan, then entered Jordan through a third country.
Why Jordan? Because Chairman Samara held dual French and Jordanian citizenship.
It was such an unprecedented event that the media covered it relentlessly, and it was even turned into a film later on.
Even though the coup had succeeded, Masaki Saito still had not fully seized control of internal power.
To stabilize the company and bring in investment from the Japanese government, he needed at least another year.
In fact, after Chairman Samara escaped, he did try to counterattack—but he failed to shake the Saito regime.
But...
“What would happen if Chairman Samara launched a counterattack right now?”
“It depends on what he has, but it would cause a major uproar.”
David added, “Right now, Chairman Samara himself is basically a bomb waiting to go off. Behind the arrest are the huge semiconductor alliances of SPME and Kionos, and behind those, the interests of the French and Japanese governments are all tangled up together.”
That was why, even though Japan was effectively detaining him in a form that was close to illegal, the French government couldn’t move recklessly either.
“If something goes wrong, this could turn a squabble between kids into a fight between adults.”
David nodded.
“But that will never happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because the Japanese government won’t let him out until the situation is settled.”
I casually slipped the question in.
“What if Chairman Samara escaped Japan?”
“What... excuse me?”
As he was speaking, David’s eyes went wide and his mouth fell open.
“No. What on earth are you planning to do?”
Masaki Saito had been born to a father who served as Finance Minister, and he had grown up in comfort.
After graduating from the University of Tokyo, he joined Kionos during the bubble economy. At the time, Japan was the best at everything.
People used to joke that if you sold Tokyo, you could buy the whole of the United States, and Japanese companies occupied the very top of the world’s market-cap rankings.
At the head of them all stood Kionos, Japan’s largest electronics company—and the largest in the world.
Assigned to the home appliances division, he rose at breakneck speed thanks to both his family background and his own abilities.
But then...
When the bubble burst, the bare face of reality was revealed.
While Japanese companies were making money off land and buildings, companies in emerging countries like Korea and China were growing at terrifying speed.
One day, while on an overseas business trip touring a Yuseong Electronics factory, he was stunned. Yuseong Electronics was pouring all of its profits back into new product development and production lines.
When he returned to headquarters, he said, “The future of displays is moving toward LCD. Yuseong Electronics is investing enormous sums in its LCD lines. At this rate, Kionos TVs may get left behind by Yuseong Electronics TVs. We need to move quickly too.”
The executives burst out laughing as though he had said something absurd.
“LCD is expensive to produce, and its picture quality and brightness are still inferior to CRT. Kionos is already making the world’s best CRT televisions. So why are you telling us to invest in LCD?”
Saito was dumbfounded.
New technologies were usually more expensive and worse than existing ones at first. Cars had been the same in their early days: slower and costlier than horse-drawn carriages.
“LCD is thinner and lighter than CRT, which makes it much more practical. Also, CRT has a limit to how large it can get, but LCD can be scaled up much further. Picture quality and brightness will improve with time.”
But the executives paid no attention to him. Instead, they poured their energy into making CRT televisions thinner, lighter, and better looking.
The televisions they released were thoroughly ignored in the global market.
The funny thing was that they sold quite well in Japan.
But within a few years, LCD technology advanced rapidly, and CRT televisions disappeared into history.
Kionos had no proprietary technology of its own, so it had no choice but to take panels from Yuseong Electronics.
Even then, nobody took responsibility. Instead, the people who had made the wrong decisions climbed even higher.
If you challenge something new and fail, someone has to take the blame. But if you just keep doing what you’ve always been doing, there’s nothing to be accountable for.
Sales and market share fell year after year, but lifetime employment and the seniority system meant that no one had to fear being fired no matter how bad things got. No one felt any urgency.
Saito sank into despair.
At this rate, Kionos is going to die.
By the time they realized there was a crisis, every division had already swollen beyond reason, to the point that there was no easy way to fix anything.
Even then, management could only vaguely pin its hopes on support from the Japanese government.
That was when Chairman Samara appeared.
He carried out ruthless restructuring and shut down factories. No Japanese executive sunk in habit and complacency could ever have done such a thing.
The employees called him a devil, but Saito thought differently.
He was a savior who had come to rescue Kionos.
Chairman Samara cut away the incompetent executives while giving capable employees extraordinary promotions.
In the process, Saito became the chairman’s right hand.
He vowed that he would follow Chairman Samara for the rest of his life.
Japanese companies have grown comfortable inside cages. That can’t go on. We have to compete on the world stage with our heads held high.
His goal was for Kionos to stand once more as a truly global company.
Right now, they were only surviving thanks to SPME’s temporary support, but once Kionos overcame the crisis, it would be able to stand on its own.
But things did not unfold the way he had expected.
SPME’s interference in management grew more and more blatant. Employees had started grumbling that they couldn’t tell whether this was a French company or a Japanese one.
He refused to accept reality.
The two companies are nothing more than strategic partners. They’d never try to steal technology or push for a merger.
Then one day, Tokyo prosecutors came to him.
“Chairman Samara is pushing for a merger.”
“At this rate, a Japanese company will be sold off to France.”
“If Kionos falls, Japan’s semiconductor industry is finished.”
“If this problem is solved, the Japanese government will support Kionos aggressively.”
Those words moved him.
No one understood better than he did how important the semiconductor industry was.
Kionos was the only hope Japan had left in semiconductors.
Even if it meant betraying the mentor he respected and taking the blame for it, he had to protect it. So, tears in his eyes, he gathered evidence of the chairman’s misconduct and handed it over to the prosecutors.
After Chairman Samara was arrested...
Even though no facts had been established and no crime had been proven, he held a press conference and poured out his denunciation of Chairman Samara.
That criticism covered not only the alleged crimes, but also his management.
“Chairman Samara destroyed Kionos through mismanagement, selling off business divisions that could have still been saved. And while the dismissed employees shed blood from crying, he collected three billion yen in salary and stock options every year.”
While Chairman Samara was under investigation, he carried out a sweeping purge.
He convened an emergency board meeting, removed Chairman Samara, and fired every foreign executive sent in by SPME.
Because it all happened in less than three days, SPME could do nothing but flail helplessly.
After taking the chairman’s seat, Saito promised to rehire some of the dismissed employees, winning the union’s support. He then met with Chief Cabinet Secretary Shimoku Ozawa to request government backing and received a positive response.
Even though Chairman Samara had been released on bail, Saito neither contacted him nor went to see him.
There was only one thing he wanted.
The revival of Japan’s semiconductor industry.
To achieve that, Kionos needed to grow larger with government support and sever its ties with SPME.
Besides, the world was now in the middle of a semiconductor war for supremacy, and that made this the perfect opportunity for Japanese semiconductors to rise again.
Even if it was something he did for his country, he did not think his actions could ever be forgiven.
Three years... three years should be enough.
Once everything was finished, he intended to step down from the chairman’s seat himself.
And then...
Then I could go before the Chairman, kneel, and beg his forgiveness.