Nurturing Core Businesses
The GS Group has decided to invest 20 trillion won (US$17.87 billion) and create 21,000 jobs in the next five years. It presented its investment and job creation plans following Samsung, Hyundai Motor, SK, LG, Hanwha and Shinsegae groups.
Accordingly, most of South Korea’s top family-run business groups responded to the government’s call for corporate efforts to increase investment and create jobs, except for Lotte, which suffers from the absence of chairman Shin Dong-bin due to his imprisonment, Hyundai Heavy Industries, which is currently carrying out restructuring due to poor market conditions, and Hanjin, which is facing a series of investigations over the owner family's improper behavior and malpractices.
GS Group announced on August 26 that it would make a 20 trillion won (US$17.87 billion) investment and hire 21,000 new employees in the next five years. The group is planning to make an aggressive investment mainly in its three key energy businesses. It will first inject 14 trillion won (US$ 12.51 billion) in the energy sector, including the investment in GS Caltex’s petrochemical facilities, the investment in GS Energy’s environmentally friendly combined cycle power plants and overseas resource development, and the investment in new renewable energy of GS EPS and GS E&R.
GS Group will invest about 4 trillion won (US$3.57 billion) on average a year during the period. The figure is up 25 percent from 3.2 trillion won (US$2.86 billion) of the average amount of investments for the past three years.
Based on the investments, GS Group will create 21,000 new jobs for five years in the future. The average number of new employees for the past three years stood at 3,800. However, the group is planning to hire 4,200 new employees on average a year for the next five years, over up 10 percent, as the demand for workforce has risen due to more workers required for new business and implementation of the new law to shorten working hours, according to GS Group.