The Billionaire Divorce No Shareholder Can Resist
It’s the stuff of Hollywood: a Korean tycoon leaves his politically connected wife for an internet sensation. Why investors could be the big winners.
The “divorce of the century” could cost this chairman $1.2 billion worth of stock.
Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/BloombergIn what’s billed by local media as the “divorce of the century,” the chairman of South Korea’s third-largest conglomerate could wind up surrendering up to $1.2 billion of his shares to his aggrieved wife. Chey Tae-won has good reason to worry that judges won’t look kindly upon him: He’s already started a second family with a glamorous American-Korean internet sensation, not to mention his wife is the daughter of former President Roh Tae-woo. But it looks like this Hollywood-caliber split could have more repercussions in the boardroom than the bedroom.
South Korea started restructuring its sprawling family-run conglomerates, or chaebol, as early as 2012. The program gained steam five years later, when it became a centerpiece of the campaign that swept President Moon Jae-in to power. Moon quickly installed a “chaebol sniper” to help unravel these overly complex corporations.