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Leaders of Korea Exchange Bank's union attempt to enter the building of the Financial Services Commission (FSC) in Seoul on Nov. 18, 2011, as the FSC holds a meeting to discuss whether to order Lone Star Funds to sell most of its stake in Korea Exchange Bank. The workers are calling for the authorities to impose a punitive measure against Lone Star's stake sale, such as ordering the fund to sell its share on the market, in a bid to prevent the buyout fund from pocketing more than twice the money it spent on purchasing KEB stocks.
Via Yonhap.
3:11 pm on November 20th, 2011 1
While Samsung & Hyundai charge more for Korean made products in Korea, where are the violent protests ?
Lone Star bought a bank that someone wanted to sell. They made money, and what is wrong with that idea. Yes, I know, no one is supposed to make money in Korea, except a Korean.
Pictures like this flash around the world, and word of mouth between big companies do likewise. No wonder Korea has a hard time getting “real” respect. They look like a 3rd world place.
4:13 pm on November 20th, 2011 2
I’m sure its because Lone Star supported the selling of mad-cow-infested US beef…
4:27 pm on November 20th, 2011 3
and how are the 2 linked ?
8:32 pm on November 20th, 2011 4
Sell their share on the market? And send KEB and other banks’ stock value down the toilet? Can you imagine what that would do to the local economy? Who planted that idea in their minds?
8:38 pm on November 20th, 2011 5
I think it’s quite instructive that Walmart can do business in places like China, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, India and Costa Rica but pulled out of, and abandoned, Korea altogether.
10:12 pm on November 20th, 2011 6
It’s much less about who Lone Star is, where they are from and how much money they’ll be making. It’s about who they are selling KEB to, Hana Financial. In public Hana has said they’ll keep KEB as a separate operation, but the workers believe the real intention is to merge operations which would likely result in big job cuts due to redundancy and the current KEB workers would be first in line because they have a cushier pay and benefit agreement than Hana offers.
The don’t really care than Lone Star mildly rigged the market during the original purchase, the union just wants to use the guilty ruling by the FSC to try to force a different sale.
10:29 pm on November 20th, 2011 7
“It’s much less about who Lone Star is, where they are from and how much money they’ll be making…”
Then why don’t they say that? Because they’d look and sound like fools. Not many would rally behind a few hundred employees losing their jobs due to business as usual at any given place.
Instead they look and sound like fools anyway(to us). To Koreans, saying or showing money flying away to waygook(pamphlet showing waygook literally on plane flying away among the clouds with suitcase of money) sounds much better.
2:26 am on November 21st, 2011 8
They fixed stock prices and done other things… made millions of $$$ ….
They’re going to make some more $$$
Americans shouldn’t act like that else where…. We let you do that cause at least ya got Army defending us…
2:51 am on November 21st, 2011 9
5:37 am on November 21st, 2011 10
#8,
Stock manipulation is quite common here, and it’s usually the CEOs who are behind it. I see it all the time. Small companies whose stocks climb 15% (the maximum allowed) on consecutive days before falling back to what it was 5 days earlier. I know a guy, one of the top day traders in Korea, who makes close to a million dollars a day spotting and riding those waves before they crash. He gave me a stock tip once, doubled my money in a week.
7:43 am on November 21st, 2011 11
Not as bad as Occupy Wall Street protests in America.
8:46 am on November 21st, 2011 12
The left wing media has done everything possible paint the Tea Party as a bunch of gun-toting racists and the right wing media has done everything possible to paint the Occupy Wall Street crowd as a bunch of stinkin’ druggie hippie criminals.
And, mixed up in all the manufactured condemnation, the real message has been intentionally lost.
The large companies have looted the country and bought off the government and the media to do so… while the thuggish police, eager to try out new Homeland Security toys, are chomping at the bit for any excuse to use them.
The real message is that the time is coming to fight the Man no matter what your ideological leanings are…
…as the Man no longer leans to the right or the left…
…he only leans toward himself.
11:24 am on November 21st, 2011 13
I post this response as one who has worked for 11 years at a company in Seattle owned by LoneStar Funds. LoneStar has sold our assets and is closing down our company, in the process laying off 70 people. I have observed the KEB situation over the years and I feel the employees in Korea that will also be out of work. LoneStar habitually invests and divests, employees lives be damned. Too bad.
12:30 pm on November 21st, 2011 14
I should also remind people that LoneStar did NOT pay any tax for profit made from KEB, by using the loophole of using foreign country based offices. I think it went something like this. In US, they said this work was done in office in Asia (either Korea or Singapore). In S Korea, they said the deal was done in US or some place other than S Korea.
3:05 pm on November 21st, 2011 15
#12, both parties are too blame. After all, Wall Street companies backed Obama in 2008 election. Then, Obama proceeded to give them bailouts. Both Republicans and Democrats work for Wall Street CEO’s.
3:26 pm on November 21st, 2011 16
Why is Korea suddenly surprised by this? It was pioneered way back in the 70s and 80s in the US. They never heard the term “Corporate Raiders” from the mergers and acquisition heyday?
Oliver Stone went of of his way to make a whole movie about it titled “Wall Street.” If the Korea corporate institutions were caught off guard by this they need to get with the program. But, I can’t believe they never heard the line, “Greed is good.”
7:07 pm on November 21st, 2011 17
Joe, Greed is good?
Yeah… go talk to the unemployed in Ohio… So, you think you are part of that 1%? good for you…
7:57 pm on November 21st, 2011 18
#17
That was the tagline of the movie I was referring to. That was 1987, so you may be to young to know that.
8:03 pm on November 21st, 2011 19
I thought the tagline was, “This time it’s personal”.
9:03 pm on November 21st, 2011 20
#16,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX61PUZ3xkI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iakR7sB0skw&feature=related
9:55 pm on November 21st, 2011 21
#12
#12
Maybe– but…
The people in the angry mobs (OWS) who are getting pepper sprayed are pushing to get pepper sprayed- they have been told the limits- outside of assembling and protesting, blocking streets and sh1tting on police cars or trying to steal a hat from a policeman will result in a well-deserved beat down. That people get sprayed- including sweet little old ladies who have been doing this stuff since the 1960s and damn sure know what they’re getting into- doesn’t bother me a bit. If the Tea Party people would have done the same things, then to hell with them, too. Play dumb games, win dumb prizes.
Now– as for the banks and other big businesses getting bailed out- I am as pizzed off as any taxpayer, if not more. That said, we need to go back to the politicians who mandated that some of these banks make bad loans. It goes back to those who meddled with the market. If the government tells me that I have to put my business at extreme risk to take care of those who I would normally never do business with- and then also mandates that I do business with these same people- and then says that they have my back, well ALRIGHTY THEN! Me- and my business- should be off the hook. I’ll take your money now, thank you very much!
There is indeed more to the message than either side is telling, but the right has articulated it better than these guys- who I am tempted to call from the left, but even they can’t say where they are.
10:30 pm on November 21st, 2011 22
Vince,
I propose a FEW people showed up to OWS and crapped on police cars just like a FEW skinheads showed up to Tea Party events.
For a number of reasons, the media focused on these sensationalistic exceptions… with the intent to brand OWS as dirty hippies and the Tea Party as gun nut racists.
And it works.
But the real message was lost…
…and that is…
From hard-working retirees to jobless hippies, there is some serious wide-spread anger in America because the goverment has stopped serving the people… any of the people.
The media is currently playing up every case of OWS filth, perversion, and petty crime… but ignoring the vast majority of the pretty average people attending who are sincerely and rightfully angry at some serious institutionalized injustice.
…because, left or right, the media always protects the Man these days.
11:12 pm on November 21st, 2011 23
Hey Vince, not only residential but also commercial real estate bubbled and crashed. Help me to understand how the government forced financial institutions to make bad commercial real estate loans.
4:09 am on November 22nd, 2011 24
Glans, when you have lost your house, you don’t rush off to the stip mall to buy a new tea set and a couple of velvet Elvis paintings.
The housing collapse started a chain reaction which hurt retail space which hurt wholesale which hurt office space and manufacturing… with a lot of other damage in between.
This is an oversimplification… but the basic idea is that when people no longer had money to spend or any place to put new junk, they stopped being consumers… and commercial property stopped giving a reasonable return on investment.