The Korean Bank That Almost Got Away

For months, Michael Kim and his team of financiers worked day and night, shuttling between Seoul, Washington, and other cities in pursuit of a seemingly quixotic goal: They wanted to be the first foreign investors to control a healthy Korean bank. The process was agonizing. By last July, Kim, a managing director at Carlyle Group, one of the world's largest private equity funds, had hit a wall. Rigid bank regulators, suspicious of the U.S. fund's intentions, blocked his every proposal to take over KorAm Bank, a small institution that he saw as a great bet on Korea's recovery.

Finally, one evening in Seoul he took his dispirited crew out to see Gladiator, the hit Hollywood action film in which the hero, Maximus, triumphs over a legion of foes. "The staff was wiped out emotionally and physically," says Kim. "I wanted something to pep them up and restore their flagging morale."