Preemptive Measures to Cope with Economic Change

STX Chmn. Kang calls for more orders, tight management and stable financial structure as key for 2012

Chairman Kang Duk-soo of STX Group said at a strategy meeting that the group has to tighten its management to make profits and stabilize its financial structure and at the same it must go all-out to get new project orders. The meeting took place at STX Resort in Munkyung, North Gyeongsang Province, where some 200 key executives of the group were gathered to ponder the group's management strategy on Nov. 27.
The bi-annual meeting assessed the group's performance in the first half and mapped out a framework for next year's management plan.
Chairman Kang warned that the global uncertainty unleashed by the EU's debt crisis would continue to make the global economy difficult, including in the United States, hampering the business environment around the world. "We have to take preemptive actions to cope with the dismal global economy and tighten internal operations in particular to spur management stability."
Kang called for three major areas for management to focus on including stepping up the pursuit of project orders, profit-oriented management, and stable financial structure in drawing up the operational plans for next year to secure growth sustainability and for the effective management of the group.
Kang said the group achieved quantitative growth in the past decade of operation, but it should focus on stable growth based on astute management.
"The most serious crisis comes when we don't know what the most serious crisis is when it is upon us," the tycoon said, adding, "We've got to turn the crisis into opportunities by actively coping with it through outstanding crisis management and an improvement in our structure."
STX Group celebrated its 10th anniversary on April 29 at its Dalian Shipyard in Dalian, China, with a declaration for its 2020 Vision, aimed at being ranked the seventh largest business group in Korea.
The 10th anniversary vision unveiled at the STX Dalian Shipyard with some 1,000 local officials, guests, and the group's leading executives in attendance, swore that the group will post 120 trillion won in annual turnovers by 2020 backed up by strategies to make STX Offshore and Shipbuilding, its major affiliate, a top global concern, maximize the group's effective management, and secure new growth engines for the group.
Chairman Kang Duk-soo said, "We will achieve our aim to record 120 trillion won in annual sales in 2020 to become a super-class global concern with everyone in the group doing his best by taking initiatives and having a challenging spirit." He continued, "What we should not forget in the process of our second jump in operation is strengthening our partnerships with cooperative firms for shared growth in the true sense of the words and do our best in fulfilling our corporate social responsibility to create jobs."
Kang said, "We should daringly forget out past performances, but forge ahead with a new resolution to prepare for our future." He said the group's main growth engines have been shipbuilding and marine structure up until now, but they will now focus on energy and natural resources to sustain operations and grow.
The chairman said the group will have to set its strategies according to each nation in which it operates and will do business in the future and explore the core areas of those nations' natural resources to the extent that the group's total annual turnover would reach 30 trillion won in that sector in the next 10 years with an operating profit of 2.4 trillion won.
In a ceremony on May 2, 2001, at Ssangyong Heavy Industries' engine plant in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, Chairman Kang Duk-soo declared the birth of STX taking over the Ssangyong Heavy Industries and renaming the company. The chairman said today is the most significant day as Ssangyong Heavy Industries, which contributed greatly to the development of the national economy since its launch in 1976, is reborn as STX following its separation from Ssangyong Group in January.
Since that day, STX Group has grown to rank 12th in Korea in terms of asset and sales in 2010. Its assets totaled 32 trillion won and sales reached 26 trillion won, surprising the country and the business community in particular. nw

Chairman Kang Duk-soo addresses a strategic meeting of STX Group CEOs at STX Resort in Munkyung, North Gyeongsang Province during Nov.27-28.
Photos on courtesy of STX