The Korea Times presents a series of specials highlighting the country’s best global brands to celebrate its 60th anniversary, which falls on Nov. 1. The best brands were picked based on survey results of experts. This is the second of the series. –– ED.

Deloitte Anjin

About the brand

Deloitte Anjin is the Korean member company of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, one of the world’s foremost professional organizations in audit and consulting services.

Sharing the global expertise and resources of Deloitte, the Seoulbased outfit provides clients with world-class services in the areas of audit, tax, financial advisory and enterprise risk services.

The firm says approximately 2,000 employees of Deloitte Anjin are committed to offering services which exceed clients’ expectation and thereby helping them excel in a globally competitive environment.

CEO

Name: Lee Jae-sool

Career: Lee has 30 years of professional experiences in financial services. Based on his rich experiences, he took charge of Deloitte Anjin last year. His expertise includes merger and acquisition (M&A) strategy, post-merger integration and restructuring.

Education: Ph.D. at Dankook University

Extracurricular: Golf, traveling

Competitive position

Deloitte Anjin is regarded as a top-tier accounting company in Korea and it has expanded its business horizon to various areas such as consulting and tax services.

During the fiscal year 2009, which wrapped up this March, the outfit chalked up 238 billion won in sales and the figure increases to 263 billion won when those of its subsidiary Deloitte Consulting are included.

The figure represents a 14-percent growth on a year-on-year basis, which is the biggest in the domestic industry. It says that it retains the top position in the market share on accounting services for the country’s 100 largest corporations.

Long-term goal

Anjin, whose heritage stretches back about 25 years ago, has a bold goal of posting an annual growth rate of 20 percent over the next five years to reach 520 billion won in turnover by 2015.

Toward that end, it plans to strengthen its capacity in the nonaudit segments like advisory, M&A, consulting and tax.

“We aim to create unique corporate cultures of pragmatic innovation, continual challenges and participation/ cooperation to make the organization the most loved one by clients and top talents,” Deloitte Anjin CEO Lee Jae-sool said.

Boehringer Ingelheim Korea

About the brand

The Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) group is one of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies, posting 12.7 billion euro in net sales last year — 20 percent of which was spent on research.

The global behemoth founded its subsidiary BI Korea in 1976, and has remained committed to supplying and marketing innovative products in prescription medicines, consumer health care and animal health products.

BI Korea has set an example of as a socially responsible company here as amply demonstrated by its support for the Wunsch Medical Award aimed at promoting academic performance in the medical field.

CEO

Name: Guenter Reinke

Career: Reinke got aboard BI in 1980 and has assumed a variety of responsibilities at different posts. He has worked at BI Korea since 1997 and took the helm of the company in late 2003. Reinke was awarded honorary citizenship by the Seoul Metropolitan Government last year.

Education: Studied economics and psychology at the University of Hagen and Dortmund.

Extracurricular: Soccer, tennis

Competitive position

BI Korea is one of the best-known global pharmaceutical companies thanks to its smart advertising strategies and seamless efforts in contributing to society over the past few decades.

Its growth rate is impressive — the German drug manufacturer recorded annual growth of 14 percent in the Korean market during the first decade of the new millennium.

One of its flagship products is the constipation pill “Ducolax.” Other core products include the antihypertensive drug “Micardis,” and anti-spasmodic “Buscopan.”

Long-term goal

Global drug companies are typically busy importing their mother company’s products to the local market, but BI Korea has a different approach as showcased by its proactive research activities here.

Under its vision of “value through innovation,” BI Korea increases investment and support in the Korean market every year, channeling upside of 20 percent of overall revenue on clinical research.

The number of international clinical tests that BI Korea has commissioned here were 46 this year, up from 13 in 2007, in a flurry of areas including diabetes and respiratory diseases.

AIA Life Korea

About the brand

AIA Life Korea is one of the leading global brands in the domestic insurance market. AIA is the subsidiary of the American International Group (AIG), the insurance company based in New York.

AIA Life Korea started operations in 1987, initially as a branch of ALICO.

It was reorganized as a branch of AIA in 1997 and began operating under the name of AIG Life Korea three years later.

The company returned to its original name of AIA Life Korea last year. Although the insurer changed its operating title a few times, its strong footing in the local market has remained unchanged.

CEO

Name: Lee Sang-hui

Career: Lee joined ALICO in 1992 and took charge of AIG Global Investment Corp. Korea in 1997.

He worked as chief financial officer of AIG Life Korea in 2002 before taking leadership of the company midway through 2007.

Education: MBA at American Graduate School of International Management

Extracurricular: Marathon

Competitive position

During the fiscal year 2009, which ended this March, AIA Life Korea captured approximately 15 percent of the market for total premium income earned by foreign life insurers, according to the Korea Life Insurance Association.

The Seoul-based outfit had more than 2 million individual customers and roughly 3.1 million in-force policies as of the end of this fiscal year to stand out as one of the top global brands here.

It brought advanced management and business knowhow based on the experience in overseas markets. Hence, it is touted as ratcheting up the level of the local insurance industry as a whole.

Long-term goal

AIA Life Korea has gained its reputation thanks to unique risk management and a mid- to long-term business strategy, which helped the corporation keep a transparent and stable financial structure.

On top of such conventional strengths, AIA Life Korea jockeys to win the hearts and minds of customers through tailor-made products satisfying their tastes.

“We put the needs of our clients first. Hence, we will continue to develop innovative products in line with the changing trends of business so that our customers can be happy,” an AIA Life Korea official said.

BMW Korea

About the brand

As a leading global automotive brand, BMW Group Korea has headed exploration of the domestic market, which has been controlled by homegrown outfits for a long time.

BMWs have been available here since 1987 when a local dealer brought the vehicles and sales started upward sharply midway through 1995 after BMW Korea was officially launched.

After accommodating Rolls-Royce in 2004 and MINI the next year, the company was renamed BMW Group Korea and has shown an unparalleled performance among global automotive brands here.

CEO

Name: Kim Hyo-joon

Career: Kim was one of the founding members of BMW Korea.

Since taking charge of the company in 2000, Kim has headed the carmaker to become the primary player in the hard-fought local market.

Education: Ph.D. at Hanyang University

Extracurricular: Golf

Competitive position

BMW positioned itself as a premium brand via proactive marketing efforts as well as various corporate social responsibility programs. As far as sales are concerned, the outfit has been also been unrivaled.

BMW sold more than 7,800 vehicles during the first half of this year to break the half-year record among import competitors and looks to reach the 15,000 mark for 2010 overall.

The entity is expected to achieve the goal without difficulty as its sales already topped 12,000 as of the end of last month. No other global automaker has ever passed through the 10,000 plateau in a year.

Long-term goal

BMW Group Korea puts sustainability and corporate social responsibility first so that the company can continue to rack up growth while making substantive contributions to society.

Under the philosophy, the outfit launched its BMW Apprentice Program in 2004, under which it trains engineers based on its cutting-edge technology. Some of them win opportunities to work for BMW.

It also donates vehicles to universities and high schools so that they can work on the best cars. This summer, it offered a total of 15 automobiles to coincide with its 15th anniversary.

Alcatel-Lucent Korea

About the brand

Alcatel-Lucent is a leading global high-tech company providing endto- end solutions for next-generation networks to service providers and enterprises. Its partners also include strategic industries and governments.

Alcatel-Lucent is a combined company formed through the high-profile merger between two top-ranking corporations — Alcatel and Lucent Technologies — in late 2006.

Alcatel-Lucent has contributed to Korean communications development since 1979 when it waded into the domestic market. The outfit has supplied a broad range of networking solutions and services to telecom operators.

CEO

Name: Shin Won-ryul

Career: Shin started his career at KT in 1978 and worked for the fixed-line operator for 18 years before joining Nortel Networks Korea in 1996. After working for some other global outfits, he moved to Alcatel-Lucent Korea in 2007 and took the reins of the firm in early 2009.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in English language and literature from Soongsil University.

Extracurricular: Music, bicycle

Competitive position

Alcatel-Lucent Korea is regarded as the foremost foreign company in the industry as it has supplied the largest number of networking solutions to service providers here.

It is the only overseas vendor, which supplied both second- and third-generation networks to the domestic market and spearheads the development of futuristic networks dubbed long-term evolution (LTE).

The outfit is also famous for its research arm of Bell Labs, which opened Bell Labs Seoul late last year in cooperation with Seoul Metropolitan City and Korea University in Seoul aimed at supporting the development of Korean innovations.

Long-term goal

On the back of experience and know-how of more than 30 years here, Alcatel-Lucent Korea aims to become a strategic partner to domestic clients, which work on communications network transformation.

“We will put forth efforts to maintain our leadership in such markets as wireless, optics and Internet protocol solutions as well as play a pivotal role in the country’s shift to fourthgeneration networks,” Alcatel-Lucent Korea head Shin Won-ryul said.

“In addition, we jockey to seamlessly contribute to the fast developing local information technology industries through proactively cooperating with our clients and partners.”