SK – Hyundai Motor, " We are the Ranking 3"

SK Group and Hyundai-Kia Motor Group have been in the middle of a war of nerves for ‘No 3’ at the very beginning of the new year.

Hyundai Kia Motor Group and Hyundai Kia Motor announced in the opening ceremony on January 2, that They achieved the sales of 56.4 trillion won, and won the third place after Samsung and LG.

A news release published by Hyundai Motor at that day had a title of ‘a jump to the third place in the industry’. Also, it assured that it will seem to maintain the third place eve in 2003.

The announcement of sales of 26 affiliates after separating the affiliates in September 2000, showed how much Hyundai Kia Motor Group sticks to the third place on the base of the sales.

The ranking dropped after the group separation in 2000, can be important case of Hyundai Motor related to pride.

Besides, for the announcement of ‘Ranking 3’ of Hyundai Kia Motor Group, SK Group said “the internal performance of the company is very critical in an ambiguous management environment, but the ranking based on the sales is not useless.”

However, SK exposed an inconvenient mind saying ‘it is out of question’ for the group orders of ’Samsung, LG, Hyundai Kia Motor and SK’.

According to the state of total assets of mutual investment-limited company published by the fair trade commission last April, Samsung, LG, SK and Hyundai Kia Motor showed total assets of 72,351 billion won, 54,448.4 billion won, 46,754 billion won and 41,266 billion won respectively. SK showed the 5 trillion higher than Hyundai Motor.

In terms of a base of total market values of listed companies(closing price of January 2), SK Group won the second place with 24,140.8 billion won with 10 trillion higher than 13,536.2 billion won of Hyundai Kia Motor, after Samsung (70,174.2 billion won).

SK officials said “The official ranking must be based on the total assets of the fair trade commission.” On the other hand, Hyundai Kia Motor said “Wait and see until the definite business results and total assets will come out in February.”.

Kang-Woon Lee kwoon90@donga.com