THE recent performance of the Lotte Giants, one of a dozen baseball teams belonging to South Korea’s chaebol, its family-owned conglomerates, has been uninspiring. But when the team’s chief executive resigned this week, it was to distance himself from the “disgrace” of another turf war: a jostle for succession at the team’s parent group between his two cousins, the sons of the Lotte chaebol’s nonagenarian founder and chairman, Shin Kyuk-ho.
His business empire has operations in South Korea (where it is the fifth-biggest conglomerate) and Japan, and combined assets of $96 billion—and it is the last of the chaebol to be managed by its founder. Mr Shin began Lotte as a chewing-gum business in post-war Japan. In 1967 he took the business home, where Park Chung-hee, South Korea’s then dictator, was offering tax breaks and perks for foreign investors. From its base in Seoul, Lotte Korea moved into fast food, hotels, amusement parks, department stores and cinemas.
The group’s controlling companies, however,...
from The Economist: Business http://ift.tt/1JeTpex
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