By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
For many individual investors, OCI was practically nameless on the Seoul bourse before 2006, excluding some hard-core pundits in the chemical industry.
But the poly-silicon business that OCI launched midway through 2006, lifted the once no-name firm out of obscurity and investors started to snap up its shares.
As a result, its stock price started to soar from lower than 50,000 won in early 2007 to more than 400,000 won in mid-2008, to peak on May 20 with a closing price of 443,000 won
To strengthen the upside momentum, the Seoul-headquartered outfit continued to sign lucrative deals with global consumers of poly-silicon, a major material used in solar-panel cells.
Back then, the euphoria ran high and the bullish run was likely to continue. But it took less than a year for OCI to plunge to rock bottom hit by a quadruple whammy.
In the aftermath of the fall of Lehman Brothers last September, the global financial crisis dented the corporation's stock price. But that international event was not the fault of OCI.
There was one more ``force majeure,'' involving outsider director Chun Shin-il, chairman of Sejoongnamo Tour Corp., who was involved in a bribery scandal.
As a confidant of President Lee Myung-bak, Chun was regarded as a political asset to OCI and was appointed to the director post in 2001.
Yet, Chun turned into more of a burden than an asset this year as he came under suspicions of tax evasion and influence peddling in association with the scandal-stricken Park Yeon-cha, former head of shoemaker Taekwang.
As the back-to-back setbacks weighed on OCI, investors started to turn their back on the once prominent firm. The result ― its share price began heading south.
The stock price more than halved to below the 200,000 mark last October. After a short rebound, the value plunged once again to 180,000 won in mid-March.
There was also a time bomb ticking ― a claim that OCI stole technology in developing poly-silicon.
In April last year, a venture start-up dubbed Sodiff filed a complaint and the case has been under investigation by the prosecution over the past one-and-a-half years.
It remains unknown how prosecutors or the courts will conclude the case, but if they side with Sodiff, it would undermine OCI.
Also completing the quadruple whammy was the recent suspicions that OCI executives exploited inside information to chalk up big gains on the stock market in 2007 and 2008.
OCI Chairman Lee Soo-young, also head of the Korea Employers Federation, and his siblings are reportedly involved in the recent insider trading cases, where they bought stock before mega deal announcements.
OCI flatly denied that Lee was entangled in the case and contended that his siblings also did not commit anything wrong. But suspicions linger.
``OCI is going through hard times. A handful of bad news troubled the company over the past few months,'' said a Seoul analyst who declined to be named. ``It is kind of a testing period. Let's see how well the firm weathers the jitters,'' he said.