Doosan Group named Chairman Park Jeong-won, 54, to take over from former Chairman Park Yong-maan, who resigned from the top post at the group from March 3.
The board of directors of Doosan Co., the holding company of the group, met on March 2 and resolved to appoint the new chairman, who is one of the great grandsons of the founder and the patriarch of the family.
Park Jeong-won is the eldest son of honorary Chairman Yong-gon, who is himself the eldest son of the late patriarch. Jeong-won, the fourth generation of the Park family, is also a nephew of the outdoing chairman Yong-maan.
Doosan is the nation’s 11th largest conglomerate.
The outgoing chairman said he had thought about turning over the top job to the new chairman from time to time, and he decided this was the year to make the managerial change, as his tenure as a registered director of the group becomes expiry this year.
The new chairman began his career with the group in 1985 by joining Doosan Glonet as a clerk. He rose through the ranks of the group, including stints as vice chairman of Doosan Co. and chairman of the affiliate management sector. He played a key role in the group’s operation, including in important areas such as M&As. He also was responsible for the management of the group’s professional baseball team, Doosan Bears, which won the championship last season for the first time in years.
The former chairman will now focus only on the management of Doosan Infracore, especially on the construction machinery affiliate’s financial restructuring. He will also take charge of running the Doosan Leadership Institute (DLI), the personnel training facility for the group, which was set up recently to improve the training of personnel working for the group and its affiliates.
The sale of Doosan Infracore’s lathe machinery unit was completed on March 3. It had been lagging for a long time, despite moves to get rid of the money-losing unit. The company announced that it earned 1.1303 trillion won for the unit from MBK Partners. The share price of the company climbed 15.04 percent, or 615 won, to 4,750 won per share soon after the sale was announced. The group’s share price rose 7.8 percent, or 5,900 won, to 81,300 won per share.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in business from Korea University in 1985, the new Doosan chairman joined Doosan Industrial in 1985. He earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Boston University in 1989.
In 1999, he led the group’s trading arm, Doosan Business Group, and boosted the company’s revenues by 30 percent in 2000.
He led Doosan Heavy Industries in 2001 when the group acquired it from the government. Park Jeong-won is also owner of the Doosan Bears, a professional baseball team that won the Korean Series title in the Korea Baseball Organization last season. He also led a successful campaign to win a coveted license to run a duty-free business last year.
“He is recognized as a ‘game changer’ who isn’t afraid of challenges,” a Doosan spokesman said.
The new leader has challenges ahead. Park Yong-maan put a lot of hopes on Doosan Infracore, but Doosan Group had 1.7 trillion won ($1.4 billion) in net losses last year.
Doosan Infracore was forced to sell its machinery tool business to private equity fund MBK Partners for about 1.18 trillion won to raise cash. With the money, the company expects its debt-to-equity ratio to fall below 200 percent.
The company, which ran a popular TV ad campaign called “Human is the first [priority],” came under fire this year for laying off new employees in their 20s.
“He will first try to stabilize the overall group that has been shaken a bit by recent restructuring,” a Doosan executive said.
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