High School Dropout Turns Billionaire on Games Firm IPO
- Born in slum, Bang Jun-hyuk built wealth on smartphone games
- Founder’s stake valued at about $3 billion at IPO price
Model figures of Netmarble Friends stand in the reception area at the Netmarble Games Corp. headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, on Friday, April 14, 2017. Netmarble, South Korea's largest maker of mobile phone games, filed to raise as much as 2.7 trillion won ($2.4 billion) in an initial public offering.
Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/BloombergThe man behind South Korea’s biggest initial public offering in seven years has charted an unlikely path in a country dominated by family-run conglomerates.
A high school dropout born in a textile factory slum, Bang Jun-hyuk has used a hard-charging attitude to grow Netmarble Games Corp. into a gaming giant, winning fans and critics along the way. Its shares debut Friday after an IPO that raised 2.66 trillion won ($2.3 billion) and values the company at about 13 trillion won, which is more than the market capitalization of LG Electronics Inc.