Hanwha, gives up Korea Life?

Hanwha Group showed its intention strongly to give up the acquisition of Korea Life.

According to a reliable source of Hanwha Group, Kim Sung Yun, the Chairman of the group, is staying in New York for consulting with international financial experts of acquisition of Korea Life.

According to the source, the international experts advised for him not to acquire Korea Life with some reasons; first, low interest rates will be sustained for long time. Secondly, the competition with multinational companies will be very severe. Last, the one trillion won needed for the acquisition is too big money.

Chung Yi Man, the Senior Manager for PR talked “after listening to advices from the experts, Mr. Kim, the chairman, has swayed in his position. At the moment, he is in favor of giving up the acquisition.”

Mr. Kim will come back next week and discuss with the staffs who are responsible for acquiring Korea Life to make final decision.

At 27th of May, Hanwha Group announced, “if the government doesn’t make clear the acquisition conditions, Hanwha group will give up to the acquisition” because the government had changed the evaluation criteria for the acquisition value.

Hanwha group talked “the announcement in May was to force the government to express evaluation criteria clearly, but this time is different absolutely from the time.”

Hanwha Group has been negotiating for the acquisition with the government exclusively since February, and was nominated as the preferential negotiation party for final adjustment of the amount by Public Fund Oversight Committee in 27th of June.

If Hanwha Group gives up the acquisition, the sale of Korea Life will start again from the scratch.

Kwang-Am Cheon iam@donga.com