Corporate hunter seeks to add values

Seoul Invest CEO Park Yoon-bae

By Choi Kyong-ae

For Park Yoon-bae, who runs a home-grown private equity fund in Korea, the late Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs is still his role model.

Park’s main job is acquiring or investing in troubled companies, restructuring them and then selling them.

“Steve Jobs had an ambition to create new values for the society to which he belonged,” Seoul Invest CEO Park told The Korea Times, Thursday.

“I want to do the same thing for our society by improving the corporate governance of companies punctuated by financial problems, moral hazards, unlawful acts, or mismanagement by their owners.”

The corporate hunter, 58, puts the highest value on overhauling the governance structure of a nonperforming company once his fund acquires it.

“Most troubled or failed companies had moral hazard problems and records of illegal acts in common,” he said. “If I buy such a company, I do not allow employees to use corporate cards for external meetings and cancel the company’s golf club membership.

“Moreover, I do not receive a penny until the company makes a meaningful turnaround in terms of finance and ethics.”

Park believes fixing a troubled company is not only good for the company but also for the Korean economy.

In a contributing article to The Wall Street Journal in February 2011, he said: “We can’t improve corporate governance alone. But we also can’t afford not to do our part to improve governance. Doing so is good for us and our own investors, and for Korean companies and ultimately for Korea’s healthy capitalism.”

Since he set up Seoul Invest in May 2002, the company has successfully improved the governance structure of seven companies and sold them as financially solid ones. They include cosmetics maker Han Skin and Taekwang Group, a petrochemical and finance conglomerate.

Citing Steve Jobs’ commencement address at Stanford University in 2005, Park said he wanted to “stay hungry and stay foolish” when it comes to making Korea’s corporate governance better.

There are still many companies that needed corporate governance improved, he said.

Park does not play golf at weekends and has a morning meeting with employees on Mondays to get them to focus on their jobs.