‘Keep on Challenging, Changing’

Lotte Group Chairman stresses exploration of future growth engines and cultivation of global-caliber manpower

Lotte Group Chairman Shin Kyuk-ho said his group’s bid to realize its 2018 Vision of becoming one of the top 10 global business groups in Asia by 2018 has begun to gain ground.
In his New Year’s message, Lotte Chairman Shin said, “We’ve challenged at home and abroad toward the 2018 Vision, with some of it having begun to pay off a little.” He added, “But Lotte Group should not rest on its laurels, let us move towards becoming a global group by accelerating our efforts to realize the vision.”
Looking back at the group’s 2010 achievements, Shin said his executives and staff members joined forces and put their hearts and souls into enhancing the values of the group’s mainstay businesses and securing new business opportunities, resulting in one of Lotte Group’s best achievements ― posting 61 trillion won in sales in Korea and abroad.
In particular, the overseas business sector gained ground thanks to its successful implementation of the global management strategies the group has prepared for several years. The sector trebled sales to 7 trillion won over the previous year by acquiring Malaysia’s Titan Chemicals and Pepsi-Cola Products Philippines, he said.
Regarding the first of the tasks his executives and staff members will have to carry out during 2011, Chairman Shin called for exploring new future growth engines. “Exploring exponential future growth engines that can raise our core values is essential so as to maintain sustainable growth amid ever-surging competition. We have to raise our corporate future values by aggressively finding new growth engine businesses.”
New growth engines could be built through M&As and entry into new markets, and preceding a process of strengthening core capacities it has accumulated could result in yielding better outcomes, said the chairman, adding that the group can seize opportunities to explore future growth engines at a time when it tries to utilize its core capacity and resources efficiently and innovate them.
Second, he urged his executives and staff members to continuously expand the breadth of making inroads into the global market and localize businesses in nations the group has already entered through thorough analysis. To this end, he said, the group will have to aggressively utilize its differentiated expertise and focus on the understanding of local culture and institutional features.
Third, Shin insisted that the group will make flat-out efforts to nurture manpower and organization designed to meet the needs of the global market. “The group needs to give an insight into the spread of the research environment beyond the conventional in-house research organization so that future strategic markets and new businesses can be explored. New ways of thinking will become a cornerstone to build a futuristic and active organizational environment, and in-house study groups will be aggressively operated so that global-caliber manpower can spearhead changes and reform,” he said.
The chairman stressed that businesses cannot adap to the currents of new changes unless they communicate with clients and society in an era of the social network. Lotte Group needs to have an insight into what clients dearly want so as to make the “Lotte” brand the one that creates new values and satisfies needs. The group can maintain sustainable growth when it takes into account social responsibility without resting on its laurels of reaching the top in terms of financial soundness.
In this context, he said, whenever Lotte Group’s cooperative concerns grow into powerful SMEs by forging win-win strategies, the group will see its competitive edge rise. nw

Lotte Group Chairman Shin Kyuk-ho

A facade of Lotte Department Store in downtown Seoul