The Korea Times

Starting a new career

'It's better to be a late bloomer than never to bloom at all' By Kim Jae-kyoung “Is it too late to begin a new career and succeed when you are 50?” Most people may answer a big “yes,” but one female entrepreneur in her 70s replied “definitely no.” For Martha Stewart, creator and founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, age is no more than just a number. During a seminar, “Super Talk,” hosted by Hyundai Card last Tuesday, she stressed that it is never late to start a new thing as long as you have urgency about your life. “I was 40 years old when I wrote my first book ‘Entertaining’ and I was 50 years old when we launched our first magazine ‘Martha Stewart Living.’ It has been an extraordinary learning experience for me and an extraordinary financial success,” she said. “I think the age of 40 or 50 can be a great time to start a new career. You know who you are, certainly know what you want and what your passions are. You can have a sense of urgency about your life and your career. I’m proud to be a late bloomer. It’s better to be a late bloomer than never to bloom

Jun 19, 2011By Kim Jae-kyoung

Economy

From ordinary to extraordinary

Martha Stewart’s success formula 1. Discover your passion 2. Get a big idea 3. Be curious & innovate By Kim Jae-kyoung In the rapidly-changing business world, some housewives, as well as many salaried workers, dream of owning their own business or starting something new. Sometimes they invest all of their wealth but only a few can claim success and smile in the end. There is no magical way to ensure a path to business success but there are three basic but key elements that can help usher in success — passion, big ideas and curiosity, according to Martha Stewart, creator and founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Stewart, better known as the queen of domesticity, is considered one of the most successful and respected businesswomen in the world because of her unique passion and creativity that have turned homemaking into a business. From the award-winning magazine, “Martha Stewart Living,” to the bestselling product lines that bear her name, she shares the creative principles and practical ideas that have made her America’s most trusted guide to styl

Jun 19, 2011By Kim Jae-kyoung

Starting a new career

Economy

Human capital issues key to making M&A work

By Chung Min-uck The human capital issue should be one of the top priorities to ensure success in cross-border merger and acquisitions (M&A), according to a global consultant with expertise in such deals. He points out that Korean firms are inclined to pay more attention to tangible issues, such as legal and financial matters, but equal weighting should be placed on intangible and soft issues, such as those related to human resources, during the course of M&A. “Korean companies especially like to have soft issues made hard. They want to see data, benchmarks and competitor information. To them this (human capital issue) is too fussy. They look at issues like pension liability. It’s important but it doesn’t drive the success or the failure of the transaction,” said Mark Arian, executive vice president of Aon Hewitt and co-leader of Aon Merger and Acquisition Solutions, in an interview with Business Focus. “Human capital issues are addressed too late. In cross-border transactions it is even more important,” added Arian. Arian claims that the human capital issues such as c

Jun 12, 2011By Kim Jae-kyoung

Economy

Key focus areas in terms of managing people issues during a global deal

●Leadership assessment, selection and team dynamics: Leaders will truly be the torch bearers in any cross border deals. During periods of transition and disruption, employees look first to leaders for guidance, motivation and focus. The Aon Hewitt Deal Survey focusing on leadership and key talent provided the following insights. Clearly, Asian companies are aware of this HR challenge but they are yet to develop "effective" strategies and top it with a rigorous implementation. To execute a cross-border deal successfully, Korean companies need leaders that can think globally and act locally. Leaders would need to have a high degree of adaptability, tolerance to ambiguity and collaborative skills in addition to being a visionary and an effective communicator. Companies need to assess and select leaders to form a global talent pool of a high performing team ― almost like a juggernaut in driving change and transformation. ●Organization culture: a lot has been talked about the importance of culture in a cross border deal. Yet, in pursuit of realizing growth and cost synergies, many a t

Jun 12, 2011By Kim Jae-kyoung

Economy

Cross-border transactions

By Mark Arian Looking at large publicly traded concerns, cash as a percentage of enterprise value is at an all time high. Many Asian companies ― public, private, and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) ― are also flush with cash. Strengthening currencies, such as the Korean won, coupled with stabilizing debt markets, low interest rates and a historically low stock market valuation in the U.S. and European markets, measured by forward price/earnings (P/E) ratio, have led many Asian companies to openly vet cross-border M&A opportunities with their management teams and boards. With this backdrop, it is not surprising that global M&A activity in the first quarter topped $799.8 billion, the most since 2007′s pre-crash frenzy, according to a recent report in Forbes magazine. Consolidating industries include energy and mining, pharmaceuticals, telecom, financial services and technology. Deal-making in Asia has also hit a high water mark through this spring, with cash-rich conglomerates investing in specific sectors such as energy and industrials. Asian outbound M&A ― different players,

Jun 12, 2011By Kim Jae-kyoung

Economy

Daewoo seeks financial innovation

_ CEO Im focuses on beefing up retail business, investment banking role _ By Kim Da-ye Every historic explorer needed funding when embarking on a journey to conquer a new part of the world. For Daewoo Securities CEO Im Kee-young, the company’s robust growth at home with a focus on wealth management and investment banking through megadeals is vital to becoming Asia’s leading financial player by 2015. In Korea, Daewoo Securities is facing a dynamic transformation of the financial market including changes in regulations and the introduction of new instruments. In an environment where brokerages could find new opportunities, Im’s strategy is to strengthen Daewoo’s retail business, especially wealth management, although that means moving away from its pure brokerage role of sales and trading. “Since the beginning of the year, we have pushed forward innovation in our retail business. We restructured branches, so that they are differentiated from each other depending on the size of their assets and the type of customer,” Im said. Calling the retail business the basis of

Jun 12, 2011By Kim Jae-kyoung

Economy

We need a bigger boat to go global

Daewoo Securities CEO stresses urgency to create large-scale IBs By Kim Jae-kyoung Globalization is at the heart of the top domestic financial companies’ growth agenda. The rationale and the urgency around it are difficult to argue against. The domestic demand for financial services is very close to saturation, leaving only a single-digit percent annual growth potential. More importantly, the securities industry is behind in its global presence relative to the national economy’s global status. In other words, they are capturing less than their natural share considering the opportunity potential. Against this backdrop, CEOs of most local securities companies here are placing a top priority on making forays into overseas markets but only a few of them have a well thought-out strategy and the discipline to implement it. In addition, their global aspiration is not aligned with their firms’ financial capabilities. In the eyes of Im Kee-young, CEO of Daewoo Securities, growth will have to come from capital market-related activities, such as investment banking (IB) and wealt

Jun 12, 2011By Kim Jae-kyoung

Daewoo seeks financial innovation

Economy

Money & corruption

Korea's savings bank fiasco is a replica of US S&L crisis By Kim Jae-kyoung The financial scandal associated with troubled savings banks here has been showing a totally different face, as former top financial regulators and policymakers turned out to be deeply involved in the fiasco. Simply put, it is not just an accident stemming from reckless mismanagement of savings banks, formerly community-based mutual savings and finance companies. It is rather the outcome of a toxic mixture of loose regulation and widespread corruption among politicians, regulators and bank executives. Local policymakers are now putting their heads together to come up with a breakthrough for the ongoing scandal. Experts say that they need to study the United States’ savings and loan (S&L) crisis of the 1980s and 1990s as the two cases, although there is a 20-year time gap, are alarmingly similar in many aspects. First of all, in both cases, the root causes were the government’s measures to raise caps on state-insured deposits and subsequent competition to offer higher interest rates for fund

Jun 7, 2011By Kim Jae-kyoung

Economy

Calibrating risk with cost when funds are tight

By Kim Hong-keun With each advance in technology that enhances connectivity and communication, the traditional corporate perimeter, with clearly identifiable boundaries, diminishes. In its place, a network with limitless potential is rising ― one where financial institutions, their customers, and their partners demand access to information whenever and wherever they need it. Customers and partners will increasingly consider how the custodian of their data is going to protect sensitive information before embarking on a long-term relationship. As a result, high-performing financial services players will take a more proactive and holistic approach to cyber security. Since attacks can be multipronged ― via email, the Web, and the network ― the ability to view traffic across protocols and networks can improve an organization’s ability to detect and block these attacks. Cost and risk are the trade-offs in any security agenda. Some elements of a cyber security solution can be expensive, with the return on investment (ROI) difficult to quantify. It’s not fun and it rarely adds to

Jun 3, 2011By Kim Jae-kyoung

Economy

Cyber security

― Advanced financial firms moving to take holistic approach ― By Accenture As senior executives weigh their next moves in cyber security, we advocate a proactive approach. Anticipate what new threats may challenge the enterprise and which security elements can help to improve performance; then weave the right security features into the enterprise’s infrastructure and digital assets. Getting ahead of the threats is not easy, to be sure. The measures taken in most financial services enterprises have been largely reactive, designed to defend against a repeat occurrence of an attack that has already occurred. Reactive capabilities are still useful, to reduce response times to and reporting of incidents, but a reactive mode is not sufficient. Effective cyber security should be incorporated into processes throughout an enterprise, not just on the perimeter. As financial services firms build, acquire, or source the right combination of capabilities, the experiences of leading cyber security professionals offer up a set of six principles that have proven quite effective in

Jun 3, 2011By Kim Jae-kyoung

Kim Jae-kyoung

Read more

Starting a new career

From ordinary to extraordinary

Human capital issues key to making M&A work

Key focus areas in terms of managing people issues during a global deal

Cross-border transactions

Daewoo seeks financial innovation

We need a bigger boat to go global

Money & corruption

Calibrating risk with cost when funds are tight

Cyber security

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