Lotte hires younger execs, more women to top posts

Shin Heon has been named CEO of Lotte Department Store to succeed Lee Chul-woo, 69, who assumes the senior president post at Lotte Shopping. Shin is considered internally a key confident of Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin.

A graduate of Hansung High School and ChungAng University in Seoul, Shin Heon joined Lotte Shopping in 1979. An expert in the department store business, he has served at key posts including chief of the retailer’s Gwangju branch, head of marketing, and chief of product operations at Lotte Shopping.

The appointment of Huh Soo-yeong, 61, president of KP Chemical, as CEO of Honam Petrochemical, another leading affiliate of Lotte Group, also reflected Shin Dong-bin’s commitment to a generational shift of top management. A graduate of Gyeongbuk High School and the chemical engineering department of Seoul National University, Huh was senior executive director for planning, research and production at Honam and CEO of Lotte Daesan Petrochemical.

Voices in and out of the conglomerate say the resignation of Lotte Group founder Shin Kyuk-ho’s eldest daughter Young-ja, 71, as president of Lotte Shopping and her transfer to the Lotte Scholarship and Welfare Foundation as chairwoman is meant to ease the burden on her younger brother Dong-bin. On Shin Young-ja’s transfer to the director of the welfare foundation and Lotte Samdong Welfare Foundation, Lotte said, “The decision was made in line with her will to play a role in contributing to society.”

Lotte Trading CEO Lee Won-woo, 62, and Lotte Card CEO Park Sang-hoon, 58, were promoted to their posts for their contributions to the project to build Lotte World II, and for increasing Lotte’s market share in the credit card market. Kim Yong-soo, 53, president of Lotte Samkang, was promoted to CEO of Lotte Confectionary after he helped raise Lotte’s competitiveness in the food business.

Song Seung-seon, a director of Lotte Mart who displayed outstanding performance as head of its online business unit, and Park Seon-mi, former copywriter and director of Daehong Communications, became the first women to be promoted to executives within Lotte Group. The conglomerate said this reflects Chairman Shin’s commitment to more proactively cultivating female human resources. In the past, Park Ki-jeong, who hailed from the fashion industry and was named director of Lotte Department Store’s design center in 2010, was the lone female executive at Lotte Group excluding those from the owner family.

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