[Editorial] Don`t be fooled around again!

The Ford Motor`s recent withdrawal from the bid for the Daewoo Motor sale has caused no small amount of uncertainties for the domestic economy. The reported indication, this time, by Nabors consortium of the United States to cancel its contract for takeover of the insolvent Hanbo Steel is a profound surprise to us all. The aborted sale of the Hanbo Steel is a deeply shocking development as to cause lots of anxieties. For it reminds us of the Hanbo case that eventually led to our foreign exchange crisis in 1997.

It is highly discouraging for us to learn that we cannot hold both Ford and Nabors accountable for their unilateral cancellation of contracts or contract negotiations. As President Kim Dae-Jung admitted, we feel we are being fooled around by Ford because we failed to scrutinize the exact wordings and terms of the contract negotiations with the Ford Motor. Such regretful consequences could have been avoided if we secured beforehand a provisional agreement of a sort in order to set exact terms of contract such as the seed money for the sales bid or the conditions of compensations for the losses due to any breach of contract.

In the case of Hanbo in particular, it looks as though we will solely have to meet any losses incurring from Nabors` unilateral breach of the contract, because we failed to stipulate compensation terms for the contractual breach.

What makes us particularly annoying here is the fact that we have no recourse to protest against their contractual noncompliance despite the losses and suffering it brought on us.

The case of Ford is somewhat different from Nabors, because Ford was selected as the bidder which can exercise the priority for the takeover negotiations. Thus, Ford did not enter into a formal contract for the Daewoo Motor takeover to have any binding obligations. Thus, Ford was free to withdraw from the negotiations whenever it was dissatisfied about the terms.

The way Ford conducted the negotiations reflected Ford`s competence and skill setting it free from any obligations. Besides, the stark realities of today`s international business made it possible for Ford to conduct such preferential negotiations.

We are utterly frustrated here by the fact that we as the poorer and weaker negotiator of the two negotiating parties have to assume all the enormous losses and costs of such failed negotiations which will in turn be translated into people`s burden. We must have a sense of profound responsibilities for the lack of preparations for safety plans or measures to counter such eventual circumstances of sales failures.

Such painful experience of negotiating failures should teach us that we must double the efforts to obtain well-trained manpowers for international business negotiations as a means to prevent the recurrences of such business blunders. Due training is called for making our poor or unrefined business practice adjust itself to the coldly calculated international business knowhow and practice.

Most essential at the moment appears the future sales to resolve Daewoo Motor and Hanbo Steel. The hasty disclosure of their sales schedule by Finance and Economy Minister Jin Nyum and their creditors reflects another blunder on their part to unnecessarily constrain their rooms and conditions for future negotiations to sell the ailing firms. Such a betrayal of what must be kept as a negotiating card makes the general public feel very uneasy about them.

The situation we have for the sale of the two firms can't become worse than now. This being the case, we can make this opportunity to turn a misfortune into a blessing by revising our sales strategy so as to sell them at their proper value instead of selling them on sale. The government and the firms' creditors are urged that they must review on a zero base all the previous plans and all other available measures in order not to repeat the blunders.