Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction will secure a 100 percent stake in Doosan Engineering and Construction (E&C) and make the troubled construction company an affiliate. Once the stock swap is completed, Doosan E&C will be delisted from the stock market.Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction anno

Five out of 10 startups shut down within two years after their foundation while only one in three (29.2 percent) sustain for five years, a survey shows.The number of new startups nudged up 0.7 percent in 2018 from the previous year, while the number of companies that went out of business in 2017 inc

The number of executives at Korea’s top 30 conglomerates decreases year after year as a growing number of companies carry out downsizing and restructuring to offset poor performance.CEO Score, a corporate performance analysis site, has recently surveyed 262 affiliates of Korea’s major 30 groups that

SK Group's corporate governance restructuring is expected to resurface next year. Hana Financial Investment said on Dec. 10 that a divorce lawsuit against SK chairman Chey Tae-won, which followed SK Holdings' massive treasury stock acquisition, could lead to a corporate governance change.“Th

Former Daewoo Group chairman Kim Woo-choong, once a symbol of global expansion of Korean conglomerates, died on Dec. 9 at the age of 82.The iconic business tycoon died of a chronic disease at 11:50 p.m. on Dec. 9, said the Daewoosky Institute, a group of former Daewoo Group employees, on Dec. 10. “K

The Korea Fair Trade Commission announced on Dec. 9 that it recently looked into 56 conglomerates, those include 49 led by owners, the 49 conglomerates have 1,801 subsidiaries, and at least one owner family member is registered as a director in 321 out of the 1,801 subsidiaries. It added that direct

AIA Korea has appointed Peter Chung as its new chief executive officer (CEO). Chung will commence his new role on Jan. 1 2020, subject to regulatory approval.Chung has a good understanding of the Korea insurance market as he has been the chief strategy and marketing officer of AIA Korea from April 2

SK Group has carried out an annual reshuffle involving a total of 117 executives, including 108 new executives and nine presidents.The group said on Dec. 5 that the executive reshuffle for 2020 is characterized by stability in the group’s top posts and a generational change in the level of executive

Six fourth-generation minor children of the Hyosung Group owner family have acquired stakes in Hyosung Corp. worth a total of 4 billion won.Hyosung Corp. announced on Dec. 5 that six children of group chairman Cho Hyun-jun and president Cho Hyun-sang bought a total of 50,168 common shares of Hyosung

SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won will meet with global IT tycoons, Masayoshi Son, chairman of SoftBank Group and Ma Win, founder of Alibaba, in Tokyo on Dec. 6.The First Tokyo Forum will be jointly organized by the Chey Jong-hyun Academy and Tokyo University under the theme of “Shaping the Future” at

GS Group chairman Huh Chang-soo will step down from his post to become honorary chairman, and his youngest brother, Huh Tae-soo, vice chairman of GS Home Shopping, has been tapped as new chairman.GS Group said on Dec. 3 that chairman Huh Chang-soo officially expressed his intention to step down at a

Kim Dong-kwan, the executive director of Hanwha Q Cells & Advanced Materials and eldest son of Hanwha Group chairman Kim Seung-youn, has been promoted to vice president. The promotion has pushed the chairman’s eldest son a step closer to the group’s throne. He is likely to come to the forefront of m

LG Group has implemented a regular executive reshuffle, appointing younger officials to key posts. Analysts say that LG chairman Koo Kwang-mo, who is in the second year as the group’s helmsman, is speeding up a generational shift to pursue future growth.In this year's regular reshuffle, which wa

Korean electronics companies continue to expand their R&D investment to secure future growth engines, but the Korean government has scaled back the tax breaks for them.According to the Financial Supervisory Service on Nov. 21, major Korean electric and electronics companies increased their R&D inves

About a half of the mergers and acquisitions (M&As) carried out by domestic listed firms since 2016 were between affiliates of the same business groups. Inter-affiliate M&As were more frequent especially among conglomerates with an asset of at least 5 trillion won.The Financial Supervisory Service (

The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) of South Korea announced on Nov. 11 that a total of 23 large business groups were under a group-wide holding company system as of September this year, up from 22 a year ago.The FTC defined the group-wide holding company system as the total assets of the holding compan

LG Corp. will sell a 35 percent stake in LG CNS. LG Corp., the holding company of LG Group, currently holds 85 percent of the system integration affiliate.LG Group is expected to secure about one trillion won in cash through the stake sale. Business watchers expect the group to use the funds to fina

South Korea does not stack up against the United States and China in terms of the number of unicorn companies, which refer to unlisted startups valued at over US$1 billion. The United States and China have 201 and 101 unicorns, respectively, while Korea has only nine.The United States and China has

The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) announced on Oct. 23 that a holding company’s subsidiaries will be banned from jointly investing in its new sub-subsidiary from next year onward. In addition, every holding company must disclose data each year on its business consulting fees and real estate ren

Lotte Group officials heaved a sigh of relief on Oct. 17 as its chairman Shin Dong-bin has avoided the worst case scenario of being imprisoned in connection with a graft scandal. The group pledged to reform itself to become a trustworthy enterprise.On the day, the Supreme Court overruled the High Co