Lee Min-hyung joined The Korea Times in 2014 and has worked as a journalist mainly in Korea’s finance, tech and automotive industry. He specializes in content creation, breaking news and in-depth analysis currently on transportation and mobility. You can reach him via mhlee@koreatimes.co.kr.
INTERVIEW Women bring competitive edge with 'rainbow leadership': KB Securities CEO
KB Securities CEO Park Jeong-rim speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at its headquarters in Seoul, Sept. 27. Courtesy of KB Securities
By Lee Min-hyung
Park underscores new horizontal, diverse corporate culture paradigm
By Lee Min-hyung
Women contribute their “rainbow leadership” to organizations, succeeding in the hyper-competitive, male-dominated Korean business environment through utilizing their competitive edge in communication skills, multitasking capabilities and high level of concentration, KB Securities co-CEO Park Jeong-rim said in an interview with The Korea Times.
Park took office as the leader of the securities firm in January 2019 for the first time as a woman, and is the only top-ranking woman CEO in the industry. She advised more woman officials to have bigger dreams of reaching higher-ranking positions without conforming to the conventional male-centered corporate culture that dominates Korean society.
“My key message is that men and women should all have a multicolored character and charisma, which I call 'rainbow leadership,'” she told The Korea Times during the interview at its headquarters in Seoul, Sept. 27.
“The notion is opposed to a monotonous leadership style. Employees and executives should make efforts to look charming in every facet of their work lives today, as society becomes more diverse in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. When I observed my colleagues and staff, I came to realize that women generally have better communication and multitasking skills, and their concentration level is also somewhat better than that of men.”
Encouraging more women to achieve better performances in their workplaces is also meaningful from the perspective of environmental, social and corporate governance, according to her.
Park studied business administration at Seoul National University and started her career at the former Chase Manhattan Bank's Seoul office in 1986. She then moved to the former Chohung Bank and worked as a senior researcher there for five years starting in 1994.
In 1999, the KB Securities chief was scouted by Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance and took on the post of a manager at the insurer's asset management division.
Five years later, she started the second chapter in her career path at KB Financial Group by moving to KB Kookmin Bank and working in the lender's risk management division.
She was recognized for her charismatic leadership style and determination and was promoted as a director of the lender's wealth management division in 2012. Since then, she has rapidly risen to the banking group's high executive level.
After becoming a vice president at the bank's risk management group in 2014, she handled a variety of crucial tasks as an executive in key divisions such as wealth management, loans and risk management.
In 2019, Park took office as the leader of KB Securities in recognition of her expertise in asset management and strong communication skills with staff. After ending her three-year first term at the end of last year, she was able to extend her term for one more year until 2022.
KB Securities' robust earnings growth was the key reason behind the extension of her term at the office. The brokerage house reported a net profit of 290.1 billion won in 2019, the first year after Park took office. But the figure has more than doubled in only two years. In 2021, the company generated a net profit of 600.3 billion won.
Creative working environment
Park underscored the need for the firm's executives and young staff to harmonize for sustainable growth.
“We keep coming up with ways to foster a horizontal organizational culture, and my role here is clearly to understand the generational gap between experienced and new employees,” she said.
“This is a must to build a creative working environment, and I advise executives to try to fit in with the young generation.”
The company introduced what it called a “reverse mentoring program” through which a senior official mingles with a group of employees from the MZ Generation, or millennials and Generation Z. Under the program, a higher-ranking official has a meal or enjoys some entertainment activities with younger staff, so the former can get a better understanding of the young generation's mindset and ways of thinking.
“A charismatic leader is not someone who tries to look overly impressive, but one who takes the initiative in handling multiple tasks. So I request our executives to take action first, so their lower-ranking officials can be freely motivated to work more enthusiastically,” she said. “The time for the hierarchical, top-down management style that once dominated Korean society is long gone.”
Stock market outlook
Even if Korean securities firms enjoyed hefty earnings growth for the past few years amid the pandemic-induced liquidity, they were not able to continue the winning streak in the first half of 2022 when the U.S. Fed and the Bank of Korea turned more hawkish than expected.
The benchmark KOSPI reached a historic high of more than 3,300 points in June of last year, but the booming market sentiment has rapidly frozen for the past few months. The main bourse even tumbled to below the 2,200-point mark in late September. The won-dollar exchange rate was also on a sharp rise in the third quarter, which drove an investor exodus from the local stock market.
Park said now is not the time for securities firms to adopt a strategy of risky, aggressive investment due to the volatile financial circumstance here and abroad.
“The key will be when the won-dollar exchange rate has stabilized,” she said. “This will determine the pace of the ongoing rate hikes and the timeline of a possible stock rebound here. But it is very difficult to clearly predict when it will be.”
KB Securities was also hit by the ongoing stock fall. The company had a net profit of 186.1 billion won in the first half of 2022, down 50.66 percent from the previous year.
She reaffirmed the firm's stance to maintain its conservative approach during this period of global financial volatility.
“The crisis we face now has been sparked by global factors and an unpredictable set of macroeconomic conditions that make it harder for us to clearly predict the future of the market,” she said. “We will remain slow and conservative in managing assets until such uncertainties are cleared away.”