S. Korean Firms Set Off on Long Road to Reform

Four of South Korea’s largest conglomerates opened a new chapter in the nation’s economic history Tuesday when they started drawing up plans to reduce their size, shore up their finances and sharpen their bookkeeping practices.

But analysts said it will take at least a year for South Korea’s powerful chaebol, which have long dominated the country’s economic landscape, to complete the wholesale restructuring agreed to under pressure from the International Monetary Fund and foreign lenders.

The chaebol reforms were among the conditions attached to the $60-billion rescue package extended by the IMF in November after South Korea got caught up in the currency and stock market turmoil that swept the region.

The plan was announced Tuesday after a meeting between President-elect Kim Dae Jung, a vocal critic of the chaebol during his days as South Korea’s best-known dissident, and the chiefs of the Hyundai, Samsung, LG and SK groups.

In addition to satisfying the IMF, Kim badly needed concessions from South Korea’s powerful business executives in order to convince unhappy labor leaders that they are not the only ones to suffer under the IMF reforms. South Korea’s two largest unions are opposing passage of a law that would make it easier for financial institutions to lay off workers.

If implemented, the voluntary measures would end a long history of influence-buying by the chaebol, whose resulting political clout enabled them to amass large amounts of credit to finance aggressive--and sometimes reckless--expansions at home and abroad.

In recognition of the prominence of such corruption, Kim reportedly told the chaebol leaders that they will no longer be asked for under-the-table donations to the government and that they are free to give their money to any party without fear of retaliation.

Last year, the business sector gave $14 million in legal donations to the ruling party--and none to the opposition.

Reducing the influence of the chaebol has been discussed in South Korean political and business circles for a decade. But it took the recent financial crisis to force the nation’s corporate leaders to change a way of doing business that made their firms, and the South Korean economy, hugely successful but in the end carried a very high price tag.

Already, eight of the nation’s top 30 chaebol are in bankruptcy proceedings and many more are expected to follow in the coming months.

International lenders, who are being asked to roll over billions of dollars in short-term debt owed by South Korean companies, have made it clear that reform of the conglomerates is a prerequisite to getting money flowing back into the nation’s economy.

The chaebol, most of which are family-owned, have traditionally carried two to five times as much debt as their counterparts in the West. The country is groaning under at least $153 billion in foreign corporate debt.

“They [the chaebol leaders] realized that if they didn’t concede to the IMF’s satisfaction, not only the entire Korean economy but they themselves would be hurt,” said Eun Mee Kim, author of a book on the chaebol.

In their statement released Tuesday, South Korea’s business titans agreed:

* To raise their accounting standards to international levels and provide annual consolidated financial statements, a practice that would make it much harder to hide bad debts or mask poor management decisions.

* To stop the controversial practice of cross-guaranteeing loans, which allowed one subsidiary to raise money based on the assets of other companies in the same chaebol and made it easy to get loans for dubious ventures.

* To refocus their businesses, which have been divided among as many as 50 companies, on a few key areas such as auto-making or electronics and withdraw from other areas to make way for small and medium-sized businesses.

* To improve their credit-worthiness and shore up their capital base, selling or shutting down unnecessary or unprofitable operations.

* To invest their personal assets and those of other major shareholders into their companies to help improve their credit-worthiness and to take personal responsibility, including resignation from their jobs if necessary, for any mismanagement or illegal activities at their companies.

President-elect Kim gave the chaebol leaders until Saturday to provide him with a detailed description of their individual plans.

Some conglomerates are already moving ahead. The Doosan group, the 14th-largest chaebol, is reducing its subsidiaries from 23 to 12 through the merger of a half-dozen operations and the sale of a half-dozen others, several South Korean newspapers reported Tuesday.

But analysts expect such reforms at the largest chaebol to take at least a year because they require significant structural and management changes and infusions of capital that will probably mean the sale or transfer of assets.

Jin Hei Park, country treasurer for Citibank’s Seoul operations, said the chaebol often masked serious financial problems through creative bookkeeping. For example, one struggling chaebol company might be bailed out through large sales to another subsidiary. The first company would record profit from the sales while the affiliated company sank deeper into debt that might not turn up on the balance sheet.

Park said the South Korean government will also need to pass legislation making it easier for these chaebol to clean up their balance sheets. That includes the layoffs bill, which will be considered in a special session of the National Assembly that begins Thursday, and lowering the capital gains tax to free up more money for the restructuring effort.

To fulfill their promises, chaebol leaders will be forced to reconsider their high-risk ventures in developing countries and major capital-intensive investments outside their core operations, analysts said.

They said that could include projects like Daewoo’s $3.5-billion investments in Eastern Europe and Samsung’s expansion into the passenger automobile industry, which came at a time of overcapacity in the global automobile market.

Chi Jung Nam of The Times’ Seoul bureau contributed to this report.

* SURVIVAL INSTINCT: South Koreans respond to crisis with stoicism and patriotism. A1