LS Group Chairman Christopher Koo.

LS Group has established regional strategies with a focus on countries that have high potential, such as China and ASEAN markets. They are designed to have synergetic effects among the group’s local operations.

Apart from the group, LS Cable & System (LS C&S) already unveiled “2020 Global Vision,” stressing balanced global growth that goes beyond Asia, while LS ELECTRIC has been devoting itself to exploring overseas markets such as North America, Europe and Southeast Asian countries by inaugurating the Global Business Division.

LS Group Chairman Christopher Koo earlier this year stressed the first of the 2020 group tasks – localizing the structural operation of manpower and the global business, thereby enhancing operation efficiency of overseas business.

Chairman Koo recently also urged new executives to become “challenging leaders,” saying that LS’s sustainable future involves the global market.

Among the group officials who have been promoted to executives this year are officials in charge of each company’s overseas operations, like the chief of the Indian operation and the head of the Undersea Business Division, both at LS C&S, as well as the chief of the Overseas Business Division and head of the Trading Division, both at E1.

LS Group plans to tap the power infrastructure, smart energy and digital transformation markets, whose global demand is on the rise this year. Major subsidiaries of the group are aiming to commercialize eco-friendly and energy efficiency technologies such as super conduction cables, micro grid, and high voltage direct current.

LS C&S is accelerating efforts to ramp up global competitiveness by making the most of its technology advantage in the super voltage, undersea and super conduction cable sectors. And the cable maker is investing big in the United States, Poland, Vietnam and Myanmar to spur growth through overseas market exploration.

Officials with LS Cable & System inspect cable products. (Photos: LS Group)

Last May, LS C&S dedicated a Polish plant to mass produce EV battery parts and telecom cables.
In Vietnam, the cable maker invested big in areas such as cable materials, bus ducts and MV cables.

Last November, the cable maker signed a deal to establish a production operation with M.A.N International Contracting to establish the groundwork to enter the Middle Eastern market.

Thanks to these efforts, LS C&S landed a 100 billion won turn-key undersea cable order from Bahrain in March and won a 108.6 billion won high-voltage direct current cable order from the Middle Eastern country in cooperation with Korea Electric Power Corp. last December.

On top of exploring global businesses, Chairman Koo is also stressing LS Group’s strategies such as “R&D Speed-up” and digital transformation. The group is shifting into a “digital company,” employing AI, big data and smart energy technologies for convergence with conventional manufacturing.

For instance, LS Nikko-Copper has transformed the Onsan Smelter into “Onsan Digital Smelter,” a smart factory system connecting the whole production process vi telecom.

LS Group Chairman Koo is noted for “bicycle management in which a bicycle rider falls off if he or she does not pedal and If ascending an uphill road is overcome albeit hardship, it will be rewarded with a downhill.” Koo himself is a bicycle riding aficionado.

He would use a bicycle in a distance of more than 40 km to commute to office and back home. Chairman Koo became the first Asian to finish a trans-Alps bicycle competition, stretching seven days and eight nights, held in Germany.