Right Time for M&As Overseas

Dr.Chung urges domestic firms to take advantage of share prices fall to acquire foreign firms


Dr. Chung Koo-hyun, president of the Samsung Economic Research Institute, urged that now is the time to take over businesses in the United States using various financial funds including mutual and hedge funds, now that many firms in the U.S. are suffering from the subprime mortgage loan crisis. Korean firms should be able to shop for U.S. firms at bargain prices, Chung said. He said the financial crisis ignited by the U.S. financial woes is unlike the one Korea faced a decade ago.
"It definitely is the time for Korean firms to take an offensive posture in M&As and R&D investments to secure new growth engines,"he urged.
He said, for example, Chairman Park Hyun-joo of Mirae Asset is one of the financial leaders who took advantage of the Korean financial crisis of 1998 to build up his financial operations, making his company a top investment firm in the country. He said Mirae Asset was just a small, little-known financial advisory firm. But Park had the insight to see the financial crisis as an opportunity to expand business operations and bought many companies at cheap prices and some through put-back options, amassing a great fortune several years later when those companies survived the crisis and were rejuvenated.
He continued to expand his business in China last year and now Mirae Asset's Insight Fund and Discovery Fund are well known in the country.
Chairman Park's successes have been due to his ability to manage risk factors. nw

President Chung Koo-hyun of Samsung Economic Research Institute.