Category Archives: Korea

the Hanjin Shipping bankruptcy

September 7, 2016 By in chaebols, Uncategorized Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Last week Hanjin Shipping (HS), a subsidiary of the Korean Hanjin Group, one of that country’s big industrial conglomerates, filed for bankruptcy.

Korean chaebol conglomerates, their analogue of the Japanese zaibatsu/keiretsu, have traditionally been highly financially leveraged, at least in part on the assumption–again along Japanese lines–of unlimited financial support from the nation’s banks.

I decided long ago that there wasn’t enough payoff for me as investor to spend the time it would take to understand the ins and outs of Korean economic politics.  So I don’t know know why HS was allowed to enter bankruptcy, or whether an effective rescue will ultimately be mounted by the Seoul government.  (The Financial Times says that the chairman of the Hanjin Group is going to inject $90 million into HS and that another $90 million in government loans is being made available, but that this falls short of the $500 million+ HS needs just to pay for unloading cargoes already on its ships.)

The bankruptcy itself seems to have occurred, whether by design or not, in a way that is creating maximum chaos for HS customers:

–HS ships are not being allowed to dock at their destinations, since ports are not likely to be paid docking fees.  Nor are HS ships already in port being unloaded, since dock workers are unlikely to be paid for their work, either.  So cargo in transit is effectively trapped on HS ships.

–some ships have already been seized by creditors, at least partly because HS didn’t take standard legal measures to prevent this

–the move comes close enough to the holiday selling season in the US to be threatening some domestic merchants’ efforts to stock their shelves

–the bankruptcy may disproportionately affect other South Korean chaebols, since HS handles 40% of Samsung Electronics’ exports and 20% of LG’s

Temporary supply chain disruptions aside, the HS bankruptcy is unlikely to do much to address worldwide shipping overcapacity. The ships themselves will continue to exist, although they will doubtless end up in the fleets of financially stronger owners–either third parties or a restructured Korean shipping industry.  What I find most striking about this is the lack of advance planning.

 

Samsung and Elliott Associates

July 20, 2015 By in Asian economic development, Current Market Thoughts, family owned companies, Korea Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

I’m not an expert on Korea.  In fact, I think of Korea in much the way I think of India or Indonesia–or Japan or Italy, for that matter.  They’re all places where very powerful family controlled industrial groups have enormous economic and political power.  As a result, the rules of the stock market game are very different from those that prevail, say, in the United States.  Piecing them together can take an enormous amount of time and effort.  I’ve believe that, except in the case of Japan in the 1980s, the reward for mastering these markets would never be large enough to justify the effort involved.

In the case of Korea, government policy, both formally and informally, is heavily tilted in favor of a set of family controlled industrial conglomerates called chaebols (much like the zaibatsu/keiretsu of Japan).  In my view, these are not American-style corporations.  They care little for profit growth/maximization or for the welfare of ordinary shareholders–Korean or foreign.  I’ve found the laws and regulations that govern them to be bewilderingly complex and their financial statements (admittedly I haven’t read one carefully in well over a decade) unreliable.

Recently, Samsung, a major chaebol, decided that one affiliate, Cheil, would buy another, Samsung C&T, at what appears to be a bargain basement price. US activist investor, Elliott Associates, then bought a bunch of Samsung C&T stock and challenged the takeover.  Its objective was presumably either to have its stake bought out at a higher price by some other Samsung company or to compel Cheil to raise the acquisition price for everyone.

My initial reaction on reading this was that Elliott was fooled by superficial similarities with the US and didn’t understand the deeper political and cultural barriers it would face in Korea.  That has, so far, proved to be the case.  Shareholders have voted in favor of the acquisition as originally proposed.  Elliott is apparently continuing to sue to try to prevent/reverse this outcome.

The situation is a little more interesting than I’d thought, though, and bears watching:

–the Elliott effort to have Samsung C&T shareholders reject the takeover failed by only 3% of the shares voted.  This is a surprisingly small amount, in my opinion.  On the other hand,

–the deciding vote in favor was cast by the government-connected National Pension Fund, which ironically has previously been a critic of chaebol behavior.

My guess is that it’s ultimately Elliott’s foreignness that swayed the voting, particularly at the NPS.  Were a Korean equivalent to attempt the same thing, the outcome might have been different.  If so, there may be hope for investors in Korea after all.  I’ll continue to be on the sidelines until there’s more tangible evidence of change, however.